SG OwnBlog

 Defense Without Strategy Ukraine seems to be hell bent on fighting a static war without almost any flexibility. Their forces may be valiant and defiant, but without a coherent strategy, the best they can hope for is to prolong their own suffering WITHOUT significantly hurting the enemy. Here is how the situation stands as of now. Kherson has fallen. The front in the South was decisively broken day before yesterday with the capture of the railway station and port. Naturally, the Russian forces did not wait and moved straight North to Mykolaiv. All UA forces on the Dnepr facing South are likely to be outflanked. Unless the Russian spearheads are cut off and destroyed in a day or two, it will be too late. The fall of the entire South seems to be inevitable.  To extricate the forces, UA should have withdrawn forces from other sectors (including far away Donetsk front). Now, the best they can try is to win time to reinforce Kyiv. Kharkov is almost surrounded. This battle seems to ...

From a glance at the map and the news reports, it appears that the Russian advance has been very slow or even checked. However, a deeper look shows the situation has worsened significantly for Ukraine. That this happened as per my expectation in the past few posts makes me feel worse. In the North, the Russian forces have already encircled Chernihiv in the past couple of days. This is not yet fully updated on this map. The two strong armored spearheads from Konotop (which had also fallen) are currently holding in Pryluky and Nizhyn. The Chernihiv garrison probably has a day or two before the Russians reach Kozelets. Then any breakout attempt to Kyiv will become extremely difficult and will likely result in very heavy losses. It is to be expected that this city too, will fall soon without affecting the battle of Kyiv. This is bad for Ukraine. Now that the International Community has rallied for Ukraine, the previous fears of Russia dealing with breakaway republics in the East should be ...

The media has been reporting massive Ukrainian victories and impending Russian defeat. The talks have also been cancelled, neither side could agree on the conditions and location. Russia has in the meantime put its nuclear arsenal on alert. Below is however the frontline as it stands roughly. Kyiv Front As we can see from the map, the situation is actually worsening for Ukraine and pretty quickly. While the latest attacks on Kharkiv were beaten back and most of the city retaken by ZSU (Ukrainian Armed Forces), Kyiv is being encircled slowly but surely. The North was the first to fall and rapidly. A direct assault to occupy the city failed yesterday, and it seems a further reinforced assault also failed to breach the city defences. In fact, some of the supply convoys were attacked further slowing the Russian advance. However, if we look at the map, it is clear that the Russians are simply encircling the capital. The road to Korosten is in Russian hands, the road to Zhytomyr is being thr...

Russian Armed Forces have continued their invasion of Ukraine over the past couple of days. The first operations had begun from the bridgeheads claimed by separatist forces in the so called Donets,  Luhansk People's Republic and the Crimean People's Republic. I will not go into detail comparing the tactical or operational situation. That requires a more serious study. Also, the information coming from the media sources is fairly limited and often contradictory - so drawing the proper conclusions is difficult. However, the overall strategic situation is a lot clearer . The image below shows the current frontline. The major problem is that such a solid frontline beyond these lines do not exist. There have been saboteurs who have been found operating significantly deeper inside Ukrainian territories. But these are roughly the lines where the major conventional forces stand. Ukrainian Mistakes before the invasion Intelligence Failure There have been some failings from the Ukrainian...

The Left in India has long outlived their sell by date. They have been able to outlive the fall of the Berlin wall, the Soviet Union and even the collapse of Yugoslavia.  After the fall of the Soviet bastion in India (West Bengal) and the demise or change in allegiance of many Left oriented intellectuals, little remains on the ground. The last breath was drawn when the Maoist movement was extinguished in the second decade of the 21st century. It does not mean the Left is extinct. There are still a sufficient number of people - both young and old who remain enamored (or infected) with Communism to this day. Indeed, non Communist parties also often toe a very avowedly socialist line when it comes to public policy.  With the death of a viable political leadership, the Communists survive and try to find like minded voices in the deeps and crannies of society. The Zombified existence remains and continues to create perverted art, articles and a narrative. Though significantly less ...

 I am pretty sure there are places where hate and bigotry directed against Hindus is shared and disseminated. However, having joined r/India in reddit actually opened by eyes to something far more one sided and vicious. The hate there has no limits, no naysayers and no justification. This will be my own megathread of all the hate speeches and opinions for the record. I did try reporting to reddit admins and mods but none of the hate speech was removed. So here I am, documenting them here. Exhibit 1 Source   Exhibit 2 Source I will keep updating this.

Overall Market Sentiment This is very confused today. The OPEC meeting did not turn out to be great. They are NOT going to increase the oil production, so the prices are going to remain high. That means BANKNIFTY will most likely not do great. There was another major problem that came up. Facebook plunged in the US since they had a downtime of more than 6 hours. This led to NASDAQ falling by close to 2% in a day! This did not sustain and we can see a recovery. However, there is a China Taiwan crisis looming on the horizon. So International Markets and especially the Asian markets are going to remain choppy for some time to come. India is in a sweet spot. FIIs and DIIs were both buyers yesterday and this trend is likely to continue today offsetting some negativity.  NIFTY AND BANKNIFTY Nifty has opened relatively flat and I think it will remain rangebound, between 17500 and 17750 for the week. Then we have results coming out, starting with TCS on October 8. So if you want to buy the...