SITREP 10/10/24: From Bad to Worse for Ukraine Amid New Surge of Russian Advances
Things have gone from bad to worse for Ukraine. Zelensky is again traveling the globe in an attempt to form some type of international consensus for ending the conflict. After half a year of deliberately obfuscating propaganda about Russia “desperately” chasing a ceasefire, it has emerged clearer than ever that it is in fact Ukraine desperate to browbeat allies into forcing Russia into an armistice. In reality, Russia has now signaled more strongly than ever that there is nothing to negotiate about presently.
The Western MSM narrative has fully pivoted to the arc that Ukraine is now ‘flexible’ as to the concessions for ending the war—referring to, namely, the now chief Western demand of giving up land to placate Russia into ceasefire.
Of course Zelensky continues to vocally declare he is not considering land-for-peace, however, this is obviously a ploy to keep nationalist groups at bay. He has to present the ostensible face of strength in this regard, when in reality he merely wants the perception to look like it’s the allies driving this initiative, in order to deflect blame onto them when it finally does happen. Proof of this lies in the fact that even Forbes pressed this issue in their latest piece, explaining how Russia seeks to deliberately force Ukraine into concessions for the express purpose of activating Ukrainian ‘nationalist groups’ to oust Zelensky:
The absurdly written article tries to sketch an equivalence between Saakasvhili losing power after the 2008 war due to forced unfair ‘demands’ from Russia in the ensuing talks, to the same happening to Zelensky were he to cow to Russian ‘demands’ in the hypothetical approaching negotiations. Most interesting is how the article winds a desultory path around the issue without ever naming precisely why it is that the danger for Zelensky is so high. The author disingenuously refuses to name the elephant in the room: ideological Nazi nationalist groups which have Zelensky gripped tight by his ‘piano hand’.
But the main highlight came by way of the Italian Corriere della Sera paper, which broke the news, on the heels of Zelensky’s Rome jaunt, that the cargo-pantsed leader is in fact ready to negotiate an end to the war:
Kyiv is ready for a ceasefire along the current front line, reports Corriere della Sera.
The leadership of Ukraine is prepared for a ceasefire based on the current front line, but without recognizing the loss of territories, in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S. and entry into the EU, the newspaper writes.
Zelensky’s European tour, which includes visits to Paris, Rome, and Berlin, is aimed at gaining support and guarantees for a swift accession to the EU. - RVvoenkor
It’s important to note the article clarifies the only reason Zelensky even touched down in Italy for the second time in a month is because the vaunted NATO Ramstein summit was abruptly cancelled after Biden ditched out amid hurricane Milton barreling down on Florida.
But some sources plausibly posed a different reason:
BREAKING: Postponed Ramstein Summit Exposes Growing Frustration with Zelensky Regime The Biden administration’s decision to delay the Ramstein summit, originally set to discuss further NATO support for Ukraine, signals deeper concerns about the conflict.
According to ex-Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, this postponement isn’t just due to Hurricane Milton. The Zelensky regime’s failing counteroffensive and strategic missteps have led to growing frustration in Washington and among NATO allies, as hopes of a military victory in Ukraine dwindle. With Ukraine struggling and the West running out of options, some suggest it’s time to rethink the strategy and seek diplomatic solutions.
The article goes on to write of Zelensky’s push for a 2025 ceasefire:
These words of Zelensky, of course, must be interpreted. He for one knows that September, as Grand Continent magazine has documented, was the month of greatest territorial losses for Ukraine since the first half of 2022: at least 468 square kilometers conquered by Moscow at the cost of about 1,000 Russian casualties per day, including deaths and injuries.
Their clincher underscores my opening thesis:
[Zelensky] for one knows that he can never officially give up the occupied territories (too unpopular for any Ukrainian politician to say). However, he would be ready for a cease-fire along the current line--without recognizing a new official border--in exchange for certain Western commitments. First, a security guarantee from the United States, along the lines of those extended by the Americans to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
In short: Zelensky wants to appear as a stalwart who said valiantly “no” to the issue of territorial concessions. But using ‘creative language’, he’s open to NATO’s idea of presenting the loss of land as ‘temporary’ and officially unrecognized by Ukrainian authorities. Those who’ve read my last paywalled piece know all about this, as I explained it all in detail already—another reason to subscribe, as you get all this cutting edge information way before it ‘breaks’ on the big MSM stage.
Politico assessed the likelihood of Zelensky’s new terms being implemented with an “odds of success score” given to each category from 0-5. Note the bottom-of-barrel score for virtually every category of real meaning:
Politico assessed the likelihood of Zelensky receiving positive responses to the requests he brought to European countries.
In the article "Five Questions Zelensky Is Asking in His European Tour (and the Likelihood He'll Get Them)," the following evaluations are given on a five-point scale (maximum 5 points):
➡️NATO Membership – 1 point.
"Although NATO has stated that Ukraine intends to join the alliance one day, no specific timeline has been set, as the U.S. and Germany lead the group of skeptics concerned about accepting Kiev."
➡️Protection of Ukrainian airspace (addressed to Poland and Romania to shoot down Russian missiles with their air defense systems) – 1 point.
"At the moment, this is completely impossible, as allies fear direct conflict with Russia."
➡️2A. Related issue: convincing them to send more air defense systems – 4 points.
"Despite promising statements over the summer, deliveries have stopped, but promises continue to be made."
➡️Permission for long-range strikes with Western weapons – 1 point.
"Allies fear that allowing deep strikes could provoke a broader war or even a nuclear response from Russia."
➡️Supply of Taurus missiles from Germany – 1 point.
"Germany stubbornly refuses to permit the shipment of its powerful Taurus cruise missiles."
➡️Development of Ukraine's military industry with Western funds – 5 points.
"Defense companies such as Rheinmetall, Nammo, and Saab have already agreed to some forms of local production programs for artillery and armored vehicles. Denmark, Canada, and Lithuania are also placing direct orders with Ukrainian companies."
The whole charade was summarized best by ex-Swiss special services agent Jacques Beaud, who condenses the US’ entire remaining objective in Ukraine as “losing without losing”:
Another way of saying it would be what I wrote many times long ago: the goal of the US and Ukraine has become to effectively find a way to spin the loss as a ‘victory’, with the most obvious method being to drum up a nonexistent ‘threat to Europe’ then paint the ceasefire as “saving Europe” after having stopped Putin’s “imperialist hordes” at the Dnieper—or wherever.
More and more Ukrainian figures are just saying the quiet part out loud, with the mood bleaker than ever as realization dawns that the West will not provide the magical deux ex machina needed to defeat Putin’s evil army of orcs.
Ukrainian ex-general Sergei Krivonos again stunned many with his unfiltered appraisal of the situation.
“Only a miracle can save Ukraine at this point.”
There’s a surge of infighting on the pro-Ukrainian social media spaces, with figures like Roepcke having blocked others like Andrew Perpetua amid all-time high disillusionment and anxiety.
Another pro-UA commentator claims to have recently returned from the front reports the war is effectively over:
Meanwhile the governor of Zaporozhye Evgeny Balitsky said Russia must continue on all the way to Vinnitsa:
On the Front
The situation on the front mirrors the political one for Zelensky—and in fact is the very reason for the latter’s urgency, compelling Zelensky to flit from one continent to the next in pursuit of help like a fly prancing from one turd to another.
The echoes of Ugledar’s fall continue to haunt the AFU in more ways than one. The debacle of the 72nd Brigade’s collapse is only just now being pieced together and understood in full, with articles like the following clarifying the suicide of one of the battalion commanders:
Meanwhile, the 123rd Brigade was supposed to provide relieving cover for the retreating 72nd, and apparently betrayed them, causing an internecine fight resulting in troops from the 123rd being captured by the survivors of the 72nd.
Meanwhile, videos have begun to appear of family members’ pleas toward their missing servicemen. Here a daughter of a soldier from Ukraine’s 152nd says hundreds are missing in the Pokrovsk direction:
Aidar boss Mosiychuk confirms:
On the tactical side, Russian forces have made a few sudden advances in unexpected zones of the frontline. Granted, to play devil’s advocate, the pro-Ukrainian side’s narrative is that these are a last-ditch attempt to take some meaningful land before the full onset of both October Rasputitsa as well as the winter freeze in general. We’ll see if there’s any truth to that. But recall that the main battle of the past year started precisely on October 10th—exactly a year ago today—that of Avdeevka: when the Russian 114th Brigade stormed out of neighboring Krasnogorovka toward the ‘Slag Heap’ en route to both Stepove and the notorious Coke Plant. That battle raged until February with no abatement, neither for rain, nor sleet, nor snow.
So now, we’ve had the usual incremental advances in the known areas: for instance toward Kurakhove, more areas north of Ugledar captured, around Selydove in the Pokrovsk direction—which town is being slowly enveloped in a cauldron:
Then there was the total capture of Tsukuryne in the same direction:
Consolidation and deep advances into Toretsk, which appears nearly 50% captured. As well as more small breakthroughs into Chasov Yar.
New massive chunk of Toretsk captured seen below:
But the big unexpected surprises came in the following directions:
A sudden gambit across the dry reservoir established a beachhead on Kamianske, opposite Russia’s positions south of Zaporozhye city:
The eminent Suriyak, however, claims the AFU expelled the Russian forces thereafter, though it remains uncertain.
The other most surprising was an advance toward long-contested Siversk near the Donetsk-Kharkov border. This too was a source of much infighting, particularly amongst the Ukrainian crowd:
But the short of it is that Russian forces appeared to spring a salient toward here:
The most significant though was an advance southward past recently-captured Sinkovka up in the north, near Kupyansk. Russian forces finally reached Petropavlovka again. You may recall, it was the site of the famous “last stand” battle of Russian troops against Western mercenaries that was amongst the most dramatic and memorably heroic episodes yet captured on film in the entire SMO.
There are many other small advances made in that region, including Vyshneve to the south (circled in yellow) and the whole area circled in red, which is turning everything between there and Sinkovka into a giant cauldron trapped against the Oskil River:
The other big advances came in the Kursk region, where Russia appeared to launch a mini offensive which resulted in the immediate driving back of Ukrainian forces, although early reports of “columns fleeing into Sumy region” were refuted by Russian sources—to the contrary, the AFU is trying to introduce reserves and hold their positions.
As seen above the offensive was primarily carried out by the 155th Marines and 106th Airborne who stormed from Korenovo direction in the northwest, again shrinking the Ukrainian land holdings of Russian territory.
Their total holdings look something like this now (white lines), with the yellow wiggly lines representing what Ukraine held as recently as a week or so ago:
Suriyak official:
In short, their control is rapidly shrinking.
Here two Russian BTR-82As were seen chasing off a Ukrainian tank, after it’s seen firing in the opening of the video, at geolocation: 51.31722474110465, 35.08217306597342
Russian Army Begins Breakthrough on Kursk Front: Powerful Assault on Lyubimovka and Attack on Zeleny Shlyakh to Cut Off Ukrainian Armed Forces Group
Today our armored groups unexpectedly attacked and broke through the enemy's defenses in the Kursk border area.
About 30 units of Russian equipment are storming the village of Lyubimovka, wrote media officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "Alex". Russian troops managed to advance and are now consolidating, the fighting continues.
A video has also appeared showing armored personnel carriers of the 155th Marine Brigade attacking and chasing a Ukrainian Armed Forces tank at the entrance to the neighboring settlement of Zeleny Shlyakh from the direction of Korenevo.
Green Way is located in the rear of Lyubimovka. If this village is occupied by Russian troops, the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Lyubimovka will be surrounded.
In fact the geolocation of that escapade shows Russian forces operating much farther than ‘officially held’ territory:
Now there is even the news that Ukrainian units have begun slowly withdrawing from Sudzha itself, albeit unconfirmed for now:
Ukrainian Army is gradually withdrawing to the town of Sudzha. Russian Army has entered Zelenyi Shlyakh and Novoivanovka and is approaching Nizhnii Klin from Obukhovka. Reports about the arrival of Russian forces to Sverdlikovo are not correct.
Of course a complement of Ukrainian POWs was taken:
And here’s what an AFU channel writes from the frontline:
Now some final sundry items.
Two very interesting pieces of news coincided.
First this:
The Times writes that the UK may soon send small groups of military instructors to Ukraine, and it will do it officially. This will be done to improve the recruitment campaign of the Armed Forces of Ukraine-they say that "elite instructors" from overseas countries will train and give basic training. If this happens, then the deployment of NATO infrastructure in Ukraine will actually begin.
Along with this:
The obvious implication appears to be that Ukraine is opening up the backdoor for NATO to begin sneaking in ‘officers’ into the AFU for higher level work, particularly piloting F-16s and newly pledged French Mirages; at least that’s what Russian analyst Older Eddy posits:
Admission of foreigners to officer positions in the Armed Forces – two-layer news. Firstly, it is clear that Kiev will drag mercenaries there, since there are not enough officers. Secondly, for a number of NATO countries, especially Eastern European ones, this is a way to support the hohla by officially registering the whole unit as «Ukrainian ».
And of course, this is the same way to legalize pilots and specialists in the field of air defense.
What to do with it? First, of course, destroy. Secondly, it would be logical to politically respond to such practices in the same way as talking about «allowing Ukraine to use missiles for targets in Russia ». This is the direct participation of Western armies in the war with Russia and cannot be interpreted otherwise. After the same direct and unambiguous warning from Putin in the West, the topic with the «missiles is preferred to be lowered on the brakes, it seems that with the theme » these are all volunteers in the Ukrainian service we need to respond in the same way that in the West we think about the consequences.
And, of course, we need to be prepared for the fact that the warning will need to be implemented. Throwing them in vain would be the worst option.
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Ukrainian intelligence officer and battalion commander named Yaroslavsky states unequivocally: "Let the partners not be offended that Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems are the best in the world."
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After another Iskander strike was seen wiping out a Patriot unit, Julian Roepcke was again sent into agonies:
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As an update to my last report regarding the shoot-down of Russia’s S-70 Ohotnik drone, unverified news later came that Russia did in fact raze the crash site with an Iskander missile. Perhaps they waited until military engineers had arrived on site rather than shooting at it immediately, or perhaps it merely took them time to establish the exact coordinates and organize an attack.
This was apparently corroborated by Forbes:
Either way, one interesting takeaway was that Russia’s latest D-30SN UMPB glide-bomb was found at the crash site—unclear if before or after the alleged strike—which is the more advanced and streamlined UMPK variant:
What does that tell us?
That the S-70 Ohotnik has been conducting actual active offensive missions, launching the latest glide-bombs at Ukrainian targets, rather than some training-wheels style preliminary sessions.
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Meanwhile the Orion drone’s activity continues picking up with new strikes recorded since last time, taking out armored vehicles in the Kursk region:
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Lastly, now our eye turns toward the Middle East where Israel stands to potentially launch some type of retaliatory strikes against Iran:
❗️"Today, at least 16 tanker aircraft were spotted at the American Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, which may indicate that Israel is fully prepared to strike Iran in the coming hours
However, OSINT channels say that the most likely date is tomorrow - October 11."
If Iran cannot prevent this strike, then it must launch a simultaneous counter-retaliatory strike at the moment when Israeli and US aircraft take off en masse. If Iran misses this strike, it may no longer have the opportunity to launch a retaliatory strike.
Hopefully it’s not the case, but we’ll watch and see.
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"gripped tight by his ‘piano hand’." Coffee through the nose. I should know better.
Thanks again Simplicius for the real granular detail which only you can make so interesting. Hubby is Dutch and mostly a normie and believes the anti Russian propaganda. I predicted when the SMO started that Russia would win easily and he laughed heartily, explaining how small their GDP was and how they would be crippled by sanctions and Putin had terminal rabies, you know the catchlines. I said, what nonsense, they are a superpower and have a massive nuclear arsenal and I gave a caveat that only a world war by the west could perhaps beat the bear. It’s fascinating how this SMO has become a world war from almost the start/before the start and STILL Russia is winning, is flourishing, is proud and is fighting as humanely as possible. Honestly I could see myself leaving the prison island down under and fleeing to mother Russia. St Michael defend us in battle against the evil ones⚔️⚔️