SITREP 10/28/24: Russia Unleashes Lightning Advances in South as 'Red Scare' Hits Fever Pitch

The North Korean ‘red scare’ is building to a fever pitch now. What seemed at first a surefire Russian ploy now increasingly looks like a Western falseflag in order to justify the escalation of the conflict:

https://archive.ph/c9i0G

Mark Rutte delivers the news, and the war from the Western perspective takes on an increasingly distorted, fantastical hue:

Western reporters seem to know virtually everything about this North Korean deployment, including specifics like that these are not ordinary DPRK troops but seasoned special forces:

So much assurance without even a shred of proof presented.

It’s actually incredible when you step back a moment and consider how the West lives increasingly in a total fantasy construct. On every global issue or flashpoint, Western media no longer exercises even the barest scruples, instead blanketly reporting the most fantastical tales with zero corroboration. In Iran we’re expected to believe Israel “decimated” the entire Iranian air defense network, countless major labs and buildings, despite zero proof apart from a single grainy satellite photo that shows a slight discoloration somewhere—far less proof than we got from Iran’s much more massive strike on Israeli bases during True Promise 2.0.

In Georgia, Western press reports with shameless authority that the election was ‘stolen’ despite no credible evidence. The entire Western order has at this point in its lurid, terminal panic given up on not only truth, but any and all foundational values that have made Western civilization what it was. Threats, lies, and propaganda are flung with no accountability or attempt at justification; it seems we’ve entered the rapid parabolic singularity point of the ‘post-truth’ era in the West. Just like how the Federal Reserve must now exponentiate its printing cycles just to stave off collapse, Western intelligentsia and its corrupt crony political class must now likewise balloon their brazen lies to infinity just to keep from drowning in them as if the buoyancy of volume will keep them up.

Granted, the above is just a general observation on the state of things—particularly in the pre-election news-cycle the sheer unrepentant nature of the gaslighting now witnessed daily is unprecedented. That being said, as stated the North Korean involvement could very well be real as Putin has reason to potentially utilize it as a warning prod; but if that were the case then most likely the troops would be used in some rear training role rather than the front-line combat assault role that NATO swears is imminent, or even already taking place according to some fake stories that DPRK troops have already been seen or captured.

We have to analyze the situation impartially from both sides. The fact that the NYT article above very conveniently claims the DPRK troops are being housed a mere 25-40 miles from the Ukrainian border is suspect: it just happens to synergize with Ukraine’s desperate plea for strikes into Russian territory. Now the Pentagon has allegedly remarked that such strikes would be allowed if the use of NK troops was confirmed. The fact that all this so ‘conveniently’ happens to play into Zelensky’s need to deep-strike Russia in order to force a NATO-Russia confrontation is extremely suspicious. But I would have dismissed all the hysteria off hand if it weren’t for Putin’s own blithe comments which seemed to leave the door open to the North Korean question; of course, he may have just been teasing the West, or deliberately leveraging the ‘strategy of ambiguity’ to strain the West’s analytical processes.

“They have warned us about an attack in the near future,” Lt. Col. Artem Kholodkevych, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 61st Mechanized Brigade, said on Saturday by text message. “Probably in the next few days.”

North Korea itself released two somewhat bipolar statements: one denied any troops and called it a provocation; the other said if troops were sent, it would accord with ‘international law’.

We do know for a fact that Russia hosted a set of exercises with Laos in September at the exact far-eastern base in Sergeevka where the videos of “North Korean troops” had been supposedly shot. This leads to the obvious possibility they could have been Laotian, apart from the fact that native Koreans have claimed they detected Korean speech or words being used, not to mention the uniforms were different than the Laotian exercises.

The NYT article boldly writes:

Mr. Kevliuk of the Center for Defense Strategies in Kyiv said he expected the North Korean troops to be used in assaults against Ukrainian positions, following Russia’s long-held strategy of overwhelming the other side with waves of ground attacks.

“North Korean units will storm the most fortified positions” of the Ukrainians “and Russian regular troops will consolidate the captured objects and lines,” Mr. Kevliuk said. “The Russian tactic is unchanged: to realize a numerical superiority in personnel with artillery support.”

There’s a second possibility—read the below and see if you can figure it out:

It seems obvious that Kiev is creating a preemptive excuse for their imminent loss of Kursk and the total catastrophic failure of the Kursk operation. In order to excuse and justify the massive failure, they can conjure the ‘North Korean phantom menace’ to claim “we only lost because Russia introduced a surprise shock force of 10,000 North Korean special forces!”

Naturally, the call for NATO troops would immediately follow. This would be a face-saving psyop to soften the morale blow for their own populace. “We didn’t lose to the Russians, we had them beat until Kim intervened!”

https://archive.ph/FmT6l

And there’s even a third option: Zelensky has finally approved and signed the law allowing foreign officers to fight in the AFU. It would be only a natural extension for him to again sneakily preempt this decision by burying it beneath the news cycle of the DPRK scare in order to imply that Ukraine had to allow foreign officers in to counteract Russia’s use of North Koreans.

In those cases the North Korean threat becomes a convenient misdirection for exactly the escalations that Ukraine itself wants to create. In fact, Lavrov appears to state just this at the end of the following video:

He reiterates about Russia and North Korea’s new treaty but says the troops scare is a psyop meant merely to justify what Ukraine itself has already been doing vis-a-vis the Western mercenaries.

Just today, a video from the Bryansk region west of Kursk showed a liquidated US Army Ranger sporting a tattoo of the famed 2nd Battalion of the storied 75th Ranger Regiment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Ranger_Battalion

The FSB also shows a photo of a killed soldier with a tattoo of the elite 75th Ranger Regiment of the US Special Forces.

🇷🇺🇺🇦 An attempt to violate the state border was thwarted in the Bryansk region - Ukrainian saboteurs were successfully eliminated, the FSB reported.

The security forces noted that a tattoo of the US Army's parachute reconnaissance regiment was found on the body of one of the liquidated militants.

The saboteurs were also found to have foreign weapons, equipment and communications equipment, as well as personal items indicating their affiliation with third countries.

As such, we can say that the probability rests in the explanation that this is a Ukraine-Western-led psyop meant to desperately escalate the war as well as excuse Ukraine’s Kursk flop; but I remain open to the possibility that Russia would actually utilize some troops either in training roles or on pre-war Russian territory only, wherein the usage would be of no one else’s business. This is particularly given that Russia and Korea just signed a historic strategic partnership. Of course the timing of that signing was likely taken advantage of by Ukraine’s GUR precisely to foment an information hoax in as believable a way as possible. But consider this thought provoking take:

He’s absolutely right: a defense of Russian territory precisely accords with the new strategic partnership between the two countries. As long as Korean troops don’t enter Ukraine proper, then I could very well see their realistic usage in defense roles particularly against Western mercenaries and US troops which we know are already operating there; this would in fact be in full accordance with international law as there is no law that states you cannot have your ally’s troops on your own territory, who are justified in defending themselves if attacked.

According to some reports, North Korea sent up to 3,000 of its military personnel to Russia, primarily engineers, officers and other specialists, to learn "drone warfare" closer to the front line. This is done in the future, to circumvent sanctions between China and Russia for the supply of spare parts for quadrocopters. Drones will be assembled in Korea from Chinese components. And of course, Koreans want to learn the methods of modern warfare to confront South Korea.

Lastly, Zelensky needs any information advantage he can get because sources have it that he was really banking on holding Kursk as his final bit of leverage in ending the war, forcing Russia into the negotiations that he’s certain will come. That means he cannot lose Kursk at any cost or his last get-out-of-jail card is gone.

This seems to be underscored by Russian frontline reports this week that Zelensky continues to send every reinforcement possible into Kursk. In fact, there was a new breach attempt far in the west, near the Belarus border and the Russian Bryansk region, near the town of Brakhlov about here—that’s where the American Ranger mercenary was neutralized:

There has also been an uptick in top NATO gear being used in Kursk, with new Leopards, Abrams, and Bradleys being destroyed there in the last few days, which means Zelensky is digging into his last remaining top notch equipment to stave off the front’s collapse.

Today again we’ve seen why Zelensky is forced to ratchet up tensions as Russian forces continue to make lightning breakthroughs on the southern front.

Not only have Russian forces now fully captured Selidove/Selidovo but they are already expanding several kilometers outward beyond it:

But that’s not even the most impressive. Just south of there Russian forces have been sweeping through the plains north of Ugledar with multiple kilometer captures per day.

In the very last report just two days ago we mentioned Russian forces just arriving at the southern edge of Shaktarske and Bohoyavlenka. Now in a mere day and change they have already captured most or all of both towns as well as territory in between and even beyond:

Here’s a zoom on Shaktarske—some reports claim it has already fully been taken, but here on Suriyak’s map it shows most having fallen; now there are reports Russian forces are already beginning to assault Yasna Polyana just north of it (update: some sources claim Yasna Polyana has already been captured in the hours since this article’s publication):

Novoukrainka, which you can see to the southeast, was also just recently entered and is already mostly captured.

My plan is looking more and more probable for a pincer forming toward Kurakhove, and to envelop that entire basin southeast of it in a cauldron:

Captured AFU from the Shaktarsk and Bohoyavlenka area looked particularly old—men in their 50s and such; so it appears this neglected line may have been garrisoned by the dregs of the depleted AFU.

Armchair Warlord notes that this entire 10km sprint happened in 48 hours.

That’s not to mention that it seems to have happened with few if any losses.

And by the way, though it’s much slower going, there has been steady expansion of control zones in the far north Kupyansk direction. This area circled in yellow has been captured and expanded relatively recently with new gains today now working their way south:

That means the AFU grouping east of the Oskol River has been split into two.

Controversial Ukrainian Rada MP now says that a fifth of all frontline doctors are being sent as assault troops, such is the troop shortage in the AFU:

Which explains this must see demonstration of the acceleration of the ongoing collapse—Deep State’s advances timelapse…watch to the end:

If that same pace continues or even accelerates further, one can only imagine where things will be six months to a year from now.

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One other major development is the confirmation of another theory I had outlined a couple reports ago that Russia may target Zaporozhye city itself. In the new Economist piece, a ‘senior Ukrainian official intimates exactly this:

A senior Ukrainian official says Russia’s next objective might be an advance on the city of Zaporizhia, a major industrial centre in Ukraine’s south close to a Russian-occupied nuclear-power plant. The same source suggests that Russia may have already taken back as much as half of the territory that Ukraine seized in the Kursk region in August 2024, Ukraine’s only significant advance since the failed 2023 counter-offensive.

Even just as of this writing a new report has come in of some Russian breakthrough in the old Rabotino direction toward Orekhov, in west Zaporozhye. There is no information yet, but if it proves true, it can give credence to the beginning of a mass Zaporozhye campaign long-expected to take place for November, which could play into reaching Zaporozhye city itself.

Furthermore, the Wagner-linked Condottiero channel reports that Syrsky is allegedly hurrying a last-ditch ring of fortifications around Zaporozhye and Odessa as if in expectation of something:

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Syrsky has been riding on ground zero all day in the Zaporizhia region. The commander-in-chief of the land forces and the main contractor for the engineering forts Timoshenko also arrived there. They discussed the third ring of fortifications around Zaporizhia and between Odessa and Nikolaev. The defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Zaporizhia region is crumbling just like in the Donbass. Apparently, the enemy assesses the risks of our offensive as high. The counteroffensive in the south did not work out. They are counting on holding at least Kherson and Zaporizhia. At the same time, all the tactical moves of Syrsky's headquarters have been very chaotic lately. It seems that there are several opinions on strategy and tactics in the headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but they do not agree with them.

Early readers will recall I always said that it would be impossible to take Odessa by a river crossing. But to be honest, now that I see the type of disintegration the AFU is experiencing first hand, where pockets of frontlines can begin to completely break down, I’m nearly starting to change my mind. There could be a point a year or two in the future where the Ukrainian defenses are stretched so thin that it may not be out of the realm of possibility that Russian troops can begin storming beachheads on the right bank, but it would all depend on the condition of the riverbed in the post-Nova Khakovka dam collapse environment.

One last article I wanted to share highlights how the Western commentariat is finally slowly coming around to the last remaining truth—that the whole negotiations fig leaf is a Western smokescreen meant to hide the fact that Russia is only gaining strength and has absolutely no reason to stop the war until Ukraine’s full capitulation:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-should-putin-negotiate/

The Spectator author outright muses: “If I were Putin I’d keep fighting.”

Interestingly, the author names many valid reasons from the Russian perspective why the war must be fought on; for instance, a freeze would allow Ukraine to join NATO and create great problems for Russia down the road. It’s incomprehensible how brainwashed Western pundits can abstractly intuit such self-evident facts, yet still not be able to bridge that tiny gap to make the full connection that Russia is therefore justified in prosecuting this war for that very reason.

In light of Selidove’s liberation, a bit of history:

In 1783, the Bakhmut chancellery of the Yekaterinoslav viceroyalty of the Russian Empire ordered the establishment of the state military settlement of Selidovka (Selidovo) near the Solena River.

With the return home.

And an atmospheric video of its capture by the 30th Separate Recon Battalion of the 90th Guards Tank Division of Chebarkul, Chelyabinsk region, of the Central Military District:

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