Oct 28 — Day 247 — Sviatove progress, Shocking Assistance, A new brigade!
Hi FB!
Ukraine’s version of bomber art continues, image attached of an M777 and its main mover.
The best start-to-finish story of the last 48 hours took place in Shakhtorsk. The UAF had rocketed the train switching yard, hitting the control building but missing much of the rolling stock, and an RT24 Russian state television reporter Boris Maksudov showed up and started recording video.
The Ukrainians, he said, missed the key targets because they are stupid and incompetent and Russia is going to win.
The Ukrainians hours later smashed the station with HIMARS rocket, setting off a pretty epic fuel fire. It’s not clear is that was in reaction to Masudov’s reporting or just coincidence: the Ukranians I think are smart enough to put a control station off line to let a whole bunch of trains pile up in a station unable to control traffic, and THEN hit it all.
Be that as it may, Ukrainian channels are all reporting it was Masudov’s report that clued the Ukrainians in on the fat target they missed. Two images attached.
Also, by way of interesting graphics, a graphic showing national military assistance relative to GDP — according to this source, the Lithuanians have edged out the Estonians,
Kharkiv-Sviatove
The UAF according to multiple sources have cut the R66 highway physically, i.e., got troops onto the road itself somewhere between Kreminna and Sviatove. A late Friday report identified the village Pesachne as the center of the fighting, involving tanks, APCs, infantry and artillery, for control of the R66 route.
Simultaneously, full UAF control is confirmed in the villages Torkse and Nevske. Multiple reports likewise are saying that, to the north of those places, the Russians are still trying to hold the Zherebrets River line to the north, as much as possible, and there were unconfirmed reports of Russian Federation (RF) attempts to regain ground in this area with (unsuccessful) counterattacks on Thursday.
Also, to the north-west of Sviatove, there was fighting reported near the village of Berestove. This is a piece of the same attack process: the Ukrainians appear to be prodding the Russian line on a broad front for weak points, and in simple terms, in this sector, they are finding them.
A probable confirmation of successful UAF pressure in this area was the appearance of POW videos posted by the two UAF units that appear, again multiple sources, to be the backbone of these attacks: 92nd Mech Brigade to the north of Sviatove (roughly), and 25th Airborne Brigade to the south.
The UAF also seems to be keeping to its pattern of using high-skill infantry to back up those attacks, in sector are confirmed Kraken, a territorial battalion apparently made up mostly of Kharkiv veterans of special forces units, and special operations group Kedr, a formation drawn from the Defense Ministry’s main intelligence directorate. According the RF-associate TG platform WarGonzo “many (UAF) sabotage groups” are operating in and around the village Torske. Kedr video from Torske attached.
I’ve taken a screen grab from https://militaryland.net/maps/deployment-map/ to give you an idea of where all that’s at.
This is a very logical place to throw in a video posted by the paratroopers of the 25th of some POWs they say they captured.
Also, this is a reasonable place to stick in a pretty impressive video of UAF special forces guys, not sure what unit or where, but I suspect Kharkiv region, literally capturing Russian troops sleeping in a forest.
And while on the subject of POWs, there was this factoid today: since the start of the war the Ukrainians have participated in 28 prisoner exchanges and brought back 978 of their own people (of whom 99 were non-military). No info on how many the Russians received back, but obviously it included the godfather to one of Putin’s kids, Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk.
Donbass
Last review’s report that Belohorivka (map) was taken by the UAF appears confirmed, as we have a video, shot by a National Guardsman in Belohorivka, which was published by regional official Sergei Gaidai on his TG channel. This is another one of those villages on the Siviersky Donets River whose control, theoretically, means the owner has a bridghead. In this case, the bridghead is an opening into the high-density, northen Donbass region, an area dotted with coal mines, slag heaps, excavation pits, and villages. The big towns in the area are Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, both important logistically and politically for the Russians to hold onto, and not a place where the Russians would want to have a big fight. Map attached, and also a video from Belohorkiva.
Further south, Bakhmut continued to be a battle center. Both sides are taking casualties and I think I’m not betraying any secrets by reporting the UAF is in the process of rotating troops there, because they intend to hold it against the Wagner mercenaries. Their boss, the former Putin cook Prigozhin, seems very intent on capturing the town no matter what: over the last 48 hours reports surfaced with Prigozhin claiming army high command wasn’t supporting his hired gunmen sufficiently, that Wagner was now trying to recruit US-trained commandos from Afghanistan, and that Wagner is in the process of creating its own artillery park and air force. I assume his plan is to have a private army better than Kadyrov’s Chechens when fighting starts inside Russia. But they will have to take Bakhmut first, and again, my information is the UAF plans to fight that one out.
Kherson
News reports and a couple of field reports filtering in to me tell of a generally static line here: the Ukrainians have stopped pushing and the Russians are digging in. The main activity is trading longer-range fire, with the Russians bombarding homes and businesses, and the Ukrainians trying, and for the most part it seems to me succeeding, at hitting military targets.
Bombardment
No major missile strikes since Tuesday. A video appeared supposedly documenting the destruction of a bunch of suicide drones off shore Odessa “a couple of days ago”. According to the report the Ukrainians had at least one German Gepard in the flight path and it was like shooting ducks on Prozac.
In March or maybe early April I predicted the UAF would eventually outnumber the Russian army in the field, so here’s a new look into the future. Before this war is over, we are going to see at least some fixed locations like generation facilities, power substations, key bridges and maybe even some industrial sites in Ukraine, festooned with ack-ack cannon and machine guns like a late-WW2 battleship.
I’m not clear what happened in the north, but on Thursday some of the northern suburbs lost power for most of the day, and at the same time the national power company DTEK reported there could be big outages all across Kyiv region, indefinitely. Then today they announced everything is working fine, of course until the Russians hit one of these substations again.
In that connection, Lithuania announced today it would donate Eur 100,000 worth of equipment to Ukraine to repair damaged electrical substations and gas pipelines. Which underlines the point that if Russia intends to bomb Ukraine into the stone age by turning off the lights, then it’s a war between the Russian military and particularly the missile forces, and DTEK’s repair crews. Image attached.
Also on the subject of bombardments, for the record, on October 22, the first combat application of the “E-air defense system” (ePPO) took place against the Russian cruise missile “Kalibr” flying at a very low altitude took place in the South of Ukraine. This is an app invented by the Ukrainians to track incoming missiles by letting vigilant citizens press a button which passes the location of the sighting via a smart phone to a data collection center, which tracks the missile real time. The organization responsible is, yet again, a Ukrainian volunteer group that effectively bypassed traditional military contracting to get the software online. That said, as in all tech news, you have to wonder how much of this is hype and how much is legitimately useful.
Stuff for Ukraine
Images appeared of a brand-new Ukrainian combat brigade: 77th Air Assault. As far as I know, this is the first unit raised from scratch by the UAF that went through basic training in England. That the Ukrainians can afford to do this, manpower-wise, is very good news about Ukrainian military manpower overall. You only form new units if your old units can hold out with the manpower they have. Contrast this with the Russians and their “mobilization”. Many pix attached.
Reports came from Italy that M109 howitzers are moving to Ukraine, image attached.
Russian Mobilization
Based on news reports, honestly it’s not going well. Just from a single 24-hour news cycle, the following cropped up, and let’s remember, these are news items from Russia, an authoritarian state:
Yaroslavl — Officer and recruit have a difference of opinion, officer throws recruit to the ground and fires a “warning shot” with his service weapon, breaking the recruit’s jaw, nose, and knocking out three teeth.
Penza — Soldiers record a complaint video: they are being quartered in a manger on dirty straw
Arkhangelsk — Contract soldier drives a Kamaz truck into a column of draftees, two dead, eleven injured
Vologograd — Officers and ethnic Kalmyk recruits have a difference of opinion, one recruit loses four fingers to a knife, officer’s nose is broken, internal checkpoint/guardhouse demolished, police called in to re-establish order. Image of that attached.
Astrakhan — Company of soldiers records a respectful video, we have no sleeping bags, could someone please provide them
Orsk — Mobilized soldiers are locked inside a base and are unable to receive food or help from relatives outside.
Somewhere in Russia, probably south — Infantry company will train defending a position, no equipment including no vehicles, no weapons, no armor.
Moscow-At a theatrical meeting with Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu “reported” mobilization is complete. Putin said the troops should only go to the front after being well-equipped and — trained. Shoigu said that’s what’s happening.
