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Notes -
Mongolian tactics is the argument that a withdrawal is not a defeat, but a lure to pull an enemy into a position for a much greater counterattack than can envelop them, i.e. getting the fortifiers to leave their fortifications and come into the fields where the mongol cavalry destroy them.
In Kherson, it was one of the cope arguments that the Russians weren't in an untenable position, but that the Ukrainians were over-extending their offensive and the Russian counterattack would evicerate them.
(The Russians claimed to have stopped the Kherson offensive multiple times in the months leading up to its completion. It wasn't hard to find plenty of arguments that the Ukrainians were making a obvious and debilitating error by pursuing the offensive.)
Every russian retreat is a glorious trap about to be sprung on the unsuspecting ukrops, every Ukrainian failure is proof of their impending failure cascade, every Russian long range strike onto civilians is magically hitting a hidden HIMARs located behind a baby crib, every Russian asset lost is just proof of how resilient the Russian manufacturing machine is, every Russian field 'improvisation' is proof of superior Russian ingenuity. Bias exists in all parties/observers within this conflict, but pro Russian cope is the finest fermented diarrhea to be injected into every vatniks urethrae.
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Excellent summary.
Back then, he still had a tendency towards drama and hyping Russian progress, but the war was more dramatic and Russian progress was more worth hyping, so he was still very much worth watching. Sure, his forecasts of Russian advances were almost always wrong (for those of us who grew up reading about the Great Patriotic War, this war is amazingly static) but they provided a rare insight into pro-Russian expectations. Every time I look at his video titles now, it feels a little embarassing.
The magic and charm of the pro-Russia blogosphere really died after the Wagner uprising. The Russians were already cracking down on the wrong forms of pro-Russian support, but it really cemented afterwards, even though it was the divergences between pro-MoD and pro-Wagern ultranationalists that provided the occasional illuminating insight. Then, both sides had an incentive to point out errors / flaws of the other's positions, which translated into some more sober assessments and concessions to reality. Now they're not much more than retreads of official talking points, lacking both the dynamism and the willingness to go off script.
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