Hi all!
This was written from outside Ukraine. Next Friday there will not be a review, time off.
The Front
The front in short term form remains largely unchanged. Ukrainian forces recently advanced in the Kupyansk and Borova sectors. Russian pressure is building (still) around Konstantynivka and Dobropilliya. Reports from 1st Corps Azov are that Ukrainian defenses are holding well but positions inside Konstanynivka are thinning. Both sides say getting water to frontline troops is a problem and rotating frontline troops has been nearly impossible for several weeks.
The most important fighting front news this week came on Wednesday evening: The ZSU cancelled a two-month-old ban on reporting of Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive. Close readers of this blog may recall having seen hints. Now the open secret is official, for the last three months the Ukrainians have been systematically capturing villages and fighting positions in the Oleksandrivka-Huliaipole sector. It’s been slow-paced infiltration followed by focused assaults. Casualties have been moderate on both sides but very real.
The Ukrainians claimed that since June their forces have recaptured about 240 sq. km. and 19 villages in territory between Huliaipole and Pokrovsk.
The next day (Thursday), Ukraine’s General Staff formally announced liberating in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipopetrovsk regions a grand total of 26 villages and 352 square kilometers of territory in something like three months of fighting. This is effectively the ZSU claim for its southern offensive in progress since late Spring, and it covers most of the area reported on Wednesday.
The spearpoint units named for this are the airborne units, meaning mostly 7th Rapid Response Corps and possibly 8th Air Assault Corps, but above all the Assault Infantry Regiments raise by the now-sacked ZSU CiC Oleksander Syrsky. Later on on Thursday, Zelensky held a televised meeting with some senior generals — according to them, since April, Ukraine has liberated 750+ square km of territory and in counteroffensives killed about 6,000 Russian soldiers and wounded about 9,000.
According to the General Staff statement the gains were achieved by detailed planning and combined arms. At the same time the ZSU announced record numbers of Russian soldier casualties and automotive casualties for July.
Putting aside fake claims that are just goofy, but broadcast on Russian TV because it makes the Kremlin happy, independent sources, over the same period, Russian forces probably captured about 65–75 square kilometers of Ukraine, at very heavy cost.
This is the opposite of Russia winning. But of course there will be those who will say Russia is big and mighty and can’t lose and must prevail. Still, it’s harder to say that when Ukrainian attacks seem to be about three times more effective than Russian attacks, not relative terms, but actual terms.
Since this is all the formal acknowledgement of a process that’s been taking place for months, this isn’t news meaning a Stalingrad-type defeat of Russian forces. But what it does mean is that the ZSU has held the ground initiative over the Russian army, since Spring 2026, and the evidence is that edge is widening. At this pace of advance it will take months, but if the progress continues a point where the Kremlin can no longer claim it is gaining territory in Ukraine is coming. That is a key trigger point at which the Kremlin would have to choose between negotiating a ceasefire or risking a military mutiny.
Russia Bombards Ukraine
Overnight Friday-Saturday, Russia hit Kyiv with six ballistic missiles, there was no return fire. There was a major fire in north of the city with four dead. Another wave of drones headed towards Odesa. Of this raid one drone entered Bulgarian airspace on Saturday and exploded close to an international gas pipeline. This was near the border with Romania. So now the war has seen Russian drones violate NATO airspace in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Lithuania. Later in the week the Germans reported the police had spotted 2,500+ unexplained drone violations flying near air space they shouldn’t, but this was civilian drones.
Per AP, Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the drone exploded just after 5 a.m. about 100 meters (330 feet) inside Bulgarian territory, and that it was not detected or identified while flying through either Romanian or Bulgarian airspace. So once again, hardly a brilliant example of NATO air defenses maintaining an impenetrable cordon against potential aggressors.
Continuing on my hobby horse about NATO incompetence probably on the level of negligence, I think it’s worth pointing out that where the drones don’t meet air defenses, they go next time. Remember the first day of Barbarossa, when the Germans caught the entire Red Air Force on the ground and destroyed something like 1,500 aircraft in a day? Those strikes had been preceded by nearly a month of German reconnaissance flights into Soviet air space that Stalin had ordered not interfered with.
I’m not saying the Russians are planning air strikes against NATO tomorrow, but detected gaps in NATO defenses increases odds Russia will consider a strike worthwhile. Remember, to fly to Bulgaria, a Russian drone has to fly over southern Romania first. The biggest NATO airfield south of Rhein-Main is Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base by Constansa. That drone that flew to Bulgaria, as nearly as makes no difference that it overflew that NATO air base — and NATO never detected it.
Overnight Sat-Sun it was Odesa’s turn. At least 8 people were injured as a result of a Russian massed missile/drone strike. It was one of the biggest combined attacks against Odesa in years with 202 drones and 17 missiles. The Ukrainians knocked down 174 of the drones and 6 of the missiles, and five were slow-flying Banderole drones that can be hit with ground fire and in the right circumstances even interceptor drones. 11 ballistic/hypersonic missiles weren’t intercepted and detonated. Infrastructure was damaged but the greatest destruction was residential buildings, some in the Old Quarter in the center of the city.
On Tuesday the Ukrainian Air Force decided it would no longer publish numbers of Russian missile detected and intercepted, according to them so as not to give free information to the enemy. Sure. An equally compelling reason, not mentioned, but real, is that even if it’s because there are no interceptor missiles, failure is failure and unintercepted Russian ballistic missiles are pretty damaging to civilian morale, trust me on this.
However the ZSU solution — just not report on ballistic missiles — is not especially bright in my book, because the ZSU is far from the only source of information about where Russian ballistic missiles are flying and where they are hitting. The natural outcome will be the Ukrainian internet will start counting ballistic missiles on its own and confirming the air defenses can’t stop them, and then it will be up the Air Force to explain why the Hell that is and why nothing more can be done. Which is far from an Air Force conversation because once authorities are cornered into admitting the reality that the US isn’t going to send enough interceptor missiles, ever, not even at a mark-up, then the authorities are going to have to answer why something else isn’t being done.
It’s patently obvious there aren’t enough PAC-3 missiles in the world for Ukraine to fend off all the ballistic missiles Russian will shoot this winter, and it is only the truly Romantic that believe that a Ukraine-developed interceptor would be developed in time for winter. This is absolutely clear, right now.
So where are the mass shipments of generators? Where is the evidence of critical production and infrastructure moving underground? Where is the evidence, in Kyiv above all, that defenses to the power grid are being reinforced? I’ll tell you where: there is none. What we are seeing is report after report of Russian strikes hitting Ukrainian infrastructure. In August. Now is the time to take action, but right now the action being taken by the Ukrainian state — looking at you Zelensky — is to gripe that the Americans won’t cough up PAC-3 missiles. This is a war, sometimes you don’t get what you want.
The Russian campaign to convince NATO that it’s unsafe to send air defense weaponry to Ukraine because Russian attack aircraft are already flying into NATO continued on Thursday with a drone reaching Latvia before being shot down by an Italian Eurofighter. Not sure of the missile used but for Russia it was a great deal: Spend about $50,000 on a drone that forced NATO to spend at least a half million dollars to shoot down, and give weight to arguments in both Riga and Rome that supporting Ukraine with air defense weaponry is a bad idea because Russian drones are already attacking NATO directly. The obvious solution is to concentrate NATO air defense capacity to stop the Russian drones over Ukraine — this is deemed politically impossible.
This is appallingly bad security policy by the West. It is appeasement exactly as reprehensible as French and British blindness to what Germany did in the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia 1936–38. Name me a European leader opposed to erecting an air defense zone over Ukraine right now, and I’ll show you the modern version of Neville Chamberlain.
continued…
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