Last night Russia struck another massive blow to Ukraine’s power grid, triggering sprawling blackouts throughout a number of the largest Ukrainian cities, including Kiev, seen below: This follows unprecedented strikes against Ukraine’s oil and gas facilities which were revealed to have wrecked a mind-blowing 60% of Ukraine’s gas production:
Many now believe this these latest actions may be the “big one”, marking Putin’s decisive turn to shut Ukraine off for good. But it’s difficult to know if the latest is merely another Russian “retaliation” for Urkaine’s own infrastructure strikes, and will subside once Ukraine ceases its own strikes, or if it represents a real pointed campaign to finish Ukraine’s infrastructure off. Ukrainian MP Maryana Bezugla warned that Kiev would be entirely “shut down”: The list of the latest hit power centers in last night’s strikes is long:
Another working theory as to why Russia has decided to finally bring the hammer down like this now rather than, for instance, last year is because it has only been semi-recently this year that Russian Geran drone production has skyrocketed to such levels as to allow the total overwhelming of Ukrainian city air defenses. In the past, major cities like Kiev could put up a much bigger fight because top NATO missile systems like Patriot and IRIS-T were able to whittle down Russian cruise missiles while mobile anti-drone teams could take out a large portion of Russian Gerans and other decoys. But now it seems a critical mass has been reached where a huge amount of objects are able to get through defenses, giving Russia perhaps its first true opportunity of total dominion over Ukraine’s energy grid. Ukrainian Air Force Spokesman Yuri Ignat has acknowledged that Russia is testing ‘new tactics’ in these recent strikes: Other recent articles had noted how Russian Iskanders have supposedly been modified to be even more maneuverable recently, which has caused the Patriot system much grief. And this isn’t the end of it: Russia has also been carrying out a simultaneous large-scale and systematic strike campaign against Ukrainian railroad infrastructure:
Another report:
From a Ukrainian channel: — But as blistering as these strike campaigns have been, they’re not even the biggest current story of the war. That distinction goes to the latest mass Russian advances leading to large collapses on the Ukrainian front. The most notable of these has been in the long neglected east-Zaporozhye direction, what we’ll call the new Gulyaipole line, which we spoke of last time. Unit Observer explains what happened, which is that Russian forces suddenly began to redeploy from southern Pokrovsk to reinforce this direction:
The question as to why is a ‘chicken-or-egg’ argument; i.e. some believe Russians were “rebuffed” in Pokrovsk and thus decided to change directions. But in reality, the more likely catalyst was simply the observation on the Russian side that the Ukrainians were extremely thinned out in this neglected Gulyaipole direction. They had realized this front was primed for a big push and decided to act with initiative just at the moment they smelled ‘blood’. And it worked, AFU forces here have suffered the fastest collapse over the past few days since the infamous north-Pokrovsk ‘bunny ears’ salient from a couple months ago. You may recall just several reports back I had mentioned how Russian forces were approaching this line of settlements running along the Yanchur river—now the Russians have sprinted right up to the river and have already begun storming some of the villages along the line: Note the red line in the above map, it is where experts have observed that the next closest major Ukrainian defensive line lies. That means the huge swath of open land between the Yanchur zone along the orange line and that of the red line will quickly be rolled up by the Russians once they take over this sprawl of settlements along the Yanchur. And once they get to that next defensive shield, the siege of Gulyaipole will begin. Note that this red defensive line runs north from Gulyaipole up to a second Pokrovske, not related to the main Pokrovsk further east: Due to the rapidity of Russia’s advancement, it has been announced that this Pokrovske is now undergoing emergency evacuations, as they already expect Russian forces to be nearing soon:
A closer look shows that a new stab out of previously-captured Verbove is headed directly in the direction of Pokrovske, written Pokrovskoe in Russian: There were many other smaller bits of territory captured between this zone and Pokrovsk, but we’ll stick to the main action for the sake of brevity in this piece. In Pokrovsk, the Ukrainians have been unable to evict Russian forces from the ‘bunny ears’ of the Dobropillya salient, and in fact Russian control has now been increasing there again. Even more surprising was that Russia launched one of the first larger armored assaults in a long while, at a time when everyone thought armor pushes were dead for good. Recall we had recently written one analyst’s opinion that Russia may soon begin large armor pushes again after greatly weakening Ukrainian defenses on some of these fronts, and that apparently was proven true. Others have aptly opined that as foliage falls away through fall and into winter, Russians may begin using more armored attacks given that the “trickle” method of inserting two and three-man groups of troops isn’t as effective when there’s no tree cover. Yesterday’s assault was launched on Shakhove from Volodimirovka, about here: Ukrainians claimed “massive losses” with hundreds of Russian troops killed, dozens of vehicles destroyed, etc., while Russian accounts differed and reported that the assault appeared to be successful as Russian forces managed to lodge themselves The official Deep State account admitted Russian forces managed to land from 50 to 75 infantrymen into the village, which sounds like the assault may have succeeded: Later however some Ukrainian accounts claimed Russian forces were no longer in the southern part of Shakhove, either having been eliminated or having retreated—but there is no confirmation one way or another yet. For full transparency here’s one Ukrainian account of what happened including the claimed losses:
Oddly enough, Ukrainians themselves tried to launch a much larger-than-average assault near nearby Mirnograd. A large column of AFU light armor was wiped out about here, according to geolocators: The video: Well, that one certainly looks more like a total wipe out compared to the Ukrainian video of the Russian assault, where a few tanks seemed to have suffered partial hits and were likely salvageable. It should also be mentioned that Russians have made progress in the city of Pokrovsk itself, capturing more of the southern districts and outlying areas: In the Konstantinovka direction there were advances as well, with some reports Russians began entering the city from the southeast Oleksandro-Shultyne salient—but we’ll leave this for next time. Heading further north, in the Seversk direction there have been big changes. Russian forces are advancing closer to Seversk from the south:
Just to the north the key town of Yampol has been half taken: Now that Zarichne has also been fully captured, Russian forces are getting closer than ever to Krasny Lyman from three directions: In fact, the advances here have been so decisive that the Ukrainian command has issued a directive officially re-designating the various directions of this front:
Lastly we head to Kupyansk, where some of the biggest breakthroughs were also recorded. In fact, as you can see Russian forces have captured a huge portion of the town, Report:
— Last assorted items: Top AFU drone figure Maria Berlinska says Ukraine is now losing technologically to Russia: — As corollary to the above, Russian forces are reportedly testing a laser on their Courier UGV bot:
— Further, in the Kharkov region Russia has reportedly been testing new AI drone swarms with fully autonomous targeting of human targets:
According to the above, the drone can recognize a person with a “machine gun” and automatically attack them…this is probably bad news for any civilian holding a mop, rake, or other common garden implements. Best to stay inside these days. — Further on the topic, Putin announced that Russia is developing new “intercontinental” weapons that are as of yet unknown to the world: — Ukrainian MP recognizes that the West is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia, the only problem is that Russians don’t surrender, and neither do the Ukrainians since they’re essentially shadow selves of one another, which leads to a catastrophic bloodbath—one that NATO loves to see.
— More fear-porn from failed-state Europe—the French are preparing doomsday supplies for Russia’s ‘inevitable’ attack: |