SITREP 1/15/26: "Winter Break" Over? Russian Campaign Stirs Back to Life
Today, a battlefield update since we haven’t done one in a while.
The main reason, besides exigent geopolitical events, is that Russian advances have stalled for the past two weeks, expressed here in this chart:
Some have suggested the Russian Christmas in early January as being responsible, as well as weather, with Europe receiving some of its heaviest snows ever recently. It is true that while Putin suggested a ceasefire for the holidays and Ukraine rejected it, the fact is that last year the same thing happened, and Putin still ordered his troops into a unilateral ceasefire, perhaps as a ‘good will gesture’.
Maybe it was something similar here. My other theory is that Ukraine has been on the attack recently, with Zelensky desperate to demonstrate some signs of “life” in the AFU for his sponsors. “Counter-offensives” have thus been taking place in Kupyansk, Pokrovsk, Gulyaipole, and other areas. During such times, the Russian army often goes into brief hibernatory defensive postures in order to whittle down the AFU before resuming its own offensive actions.
That’s not to mention Ukrainian analysts’ reports like the following, that Russia has been using the recent period as a kind of probing phase, knocking on the AFU’s ol’ hull to test for soft spots which could be taken advantage of:
Overall, the enemy is operating here on a broad front, without concentration in one place, constantly shifting pressure vectors. The sector is extremely complex and critical; any weakening is immediately exploited for advances, flanking maneuvers, and expansion of the gray zone.
👉 Ukrainian Post
That said, there have finally been signs that Russians own advances are stirring back to life for the new year.
One of the main areas of activity has been the westernmost Zaporozhye front, where Russian forces continue breaking past the Ukrainian defensive line around Stepnogorsk-Orekhov. This is the place where last time we discussed Russia’s capture of the claimed world’s largest manganese deposits.
From Suriyak maps, showing new advances:
The blue line above, by the way—which goes through the letters AKM of the watermark—is the previous defensive line that Russian troops have now burst through.
One of the key things to understand about the advances of this region is the following, which is illustrated by the wider map:
As can be seen, a large ‘bowl’ is being formed as a slow encirclement of the entire interior Zaporozhye region. It may at first appear like this is very far from being a cauldron of any kind, but the key thing to understand is the entire region is fed by two main supply routes, which are highlighted in light blue above.
Between those major roads there is virtually nothing but difficult dirt roads—and as can be seen, Russian forces are positioned to approach both MSRs at each end of the forming bowl within the next two months, give or take. Seizing those two MSRs would effectively strangulate the entire middle region and likely lead to its rapid collapse.
Moving further to the east, Russian forces captured most of the open area on Novopavlovka’s eastern and southern flank, seen below in the darker colored region under the yellow arrows:
This primes Novopavlovka for full infiltration and capture in the future.
In Konstantinovka, Russian forces likewise captured all the ‘dead space’ around the city’s flanks in the area of the yellow arrows, facilitating the next infiltration phase about which Ukrainian analysts are now gravely concerned:
Top Ukrainian analyst Myroshnykov elaborates on the concern:
The enemy is trying to implement the Severodonetsk scenario in Kostiantynivka.
What does this mean? A rapid infiltration of a large number of groups, fire support from artillery, drones, and aerial bombs.
After the infiltration, the task is to secure positions as quickly as possible, which already distinguishes the tactics from those in Pokrovsk.
After securing positions, the enemy continues to reinforce his forces and advance further.
So far, the Defense Forces have been able to eliminate small groups of the enemy.
However, there are setbacks on both flanks, as a result of which Kostiantynivka is gradually finding itself in a fire trap.
The situation there is no longer equal, but more resembles an enemy offensive, with a trap in the middle.
The further it goes, the harder it will be.
If nothing changes, Kostiantynivka will be lost.
There were many small advances in the South and Center Group region, but nothing large enough yet to write home about. Gerasimov did visit the Center Group’s HQ to make a progress report:
He appeared to reiterate the Russian MOD stance that Ukraine does not actually control Kupyansk, but is merely playing psyop control games. Well, apparently this too is a psyop game on behalf of the MOD because we know for a fact Ukraine has retaken much of western Kupyansk—but that said, it’s true their “control” of the “retaken” areas likely does not correspond to “consolidation”. When nothing but a big gray zone exists, both sides justify themselves in calling it “their territory”—and the claims are relatively unfalsifiable.
That said, Russian forces have finally been making a comeback there, pushing the AFU out little by little and at the minimum having stopped them from further advances into the eastern part of Kupyansk. In short, Russia appears to have ‘stabilized’ the situation there and is slowly reversing it, as far as we can tell, at least:
The Krasny Lyman direction has seen the most movement after western Zaporozhye. Russian forces have actually begun assaulting and entering Svyatogorsk, which we had predicted they would begin doing in the last full frontline update several weeks ago:
In fact, a couple days ago they had made it much farther into Svyatogorsk than the map above implies, but then were booted out by a Ukrainian counter-attack, leaving much of the area in a gray zone.
The last most interesting update also brings us around to something mentioned last time two weeks back. Recall we had relayed the Ukrainian authorities’ announcement of an evacuation of dozens of villages in the Chernigov region in the direction of Kiev.
We had said that most likely this means Russian “buffer zone” activity will soon begin there, and it became true:
The official AFU-sponsored Deep State map maker writes:
❗️Russian military activity has been detected on the Ukrainian border: the Russians are deploying soldiers and equipment towards the Sumy region, - “Deep State”.
He stated, ‘We really don’t need this right now.’
And just like that, Russian forces over the past few days began small breakthroughs over the border in Chernigov and Sumy nearby. There were two in particular, first the close-ups:
Now the wider view for context—you can see Chernigov, Sumy, and Kiev circled in yellow:
Yes, these border breakthroughs look tiny in the overall map, for now at least. But it’s just to orient you to see that this is the first time Russian forces have attempted to break through this far into Chernigov and the edge of Sumy since 2022.
As small as the advances are for now, this is the first real indication that we could see another march on Kiev eventually. Granted, Putin’s ‘official’ stance is these are just buffer zones meant to keep Russia’s Belgorod, Kursk, and Bryansk regions safe from Ukrainian attacks. But of course Putin wouldn’t exactly admit to a master plan of seizing Kiev this ‘early’ in the game, if it did exist—no need to rock the geopolitical boat.
Not that I’m suggesting Russian troops can approach Kiev any time even remotely “soon”, but it is interesting they are being introduced in this direction precisely at a time when more and more Ukrainian authorities are now discussing various evacuations of Kiev, with Zelensky himself announcing a state of emergency over the energy situation.
Director of the Ukrainian Energy Center, Viktor Kharchenko:
Kiev has never seen a more difficult situation. Never before in the world has a power grid been attacked at -15°C, destroying a city with central heating.
Now, Kharkov was targeted last night:
Earlier 5-6 Tornado-S missiles struck TPP-5 in Pisochyn Kharkiv with reconnaissance drone correcting the hits. The mayor of Kharkiv mentioned that the energy is heavily damaged. According to Zelensky 400 thousand people are without lights and heating
The mayor of Kharkov made the announcement on his official channel:
Another interesting find on this count is a Ukrainian officer posted from the front that it is actually Zelensky secretly holding units back from striking some of Russia’s energy infrastructure:
Now why would Zelensky go and do a thing like that?
We’ve already answered it long ago: there are secret agreements, both implicit and otherwise, and Zelensky knows if he provokes Russia too much, he will incur the type of wrath from which there is no coming back. Apparently, we can deduce that Ukraine is on the brink and Zelensky has chosen to “play it safe”, rather than risk Russia shutting down Ukraine’s grid in its entirety.
The consequences of the attack by Iskander-M and a drone on a 750 kW “Zaporizhia” electrical substation in the Volnyansk region, in the part of the Zaporizhia region occupied by Ukrainian armed forces⭕️
Now, as of this writing Ukrainian channels are reporting that there is indication of another massive attack that includes usage of the Oreshnik coming this weekend. Apparently the same activity which clued off the Oreshnik last time is being seen again. Others believe it is the staging of new extended range 1,000km Iskanders, which could hit anywhere in Ukraine when fired from Russian territory.
Oreshnik, by the way, scared the pants off Europe so much that even Macron just mentioned it in his new speech last night, announcing that Europe is in desperate need of their own Oreshnik:
Apparently, the contraption powered by “Gagarin’s gyroscope” is giving ol’ Macron sleepless nights to the point of some rather unfortunate health consequences.
It seems Europe isn’t buying CNN’s latest ‘production’ from guys wearing hats that literally read “expert” to signal “authority” to CNN’s gormless audience like some kind of bad Monty Python skit.
Well, if rumors prove true perhaps Macron will have a second eye to worry about this weekend—at least if Brigitte has anything to do with it.
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So the West is scared of Oreshnick and Micron announced they need one of their own. Yah, well, there are a few problems there. Over the last 30 years the West has prioritized the following in its universities:
1. Womens' studies (whatever that is),
2. Transgenderism,
3. Political science,
4. Law,
5. International relations.
While these subject areas are great for bilking students out of thousands of dollars in tuition fees, the graduates of these programs are completely useless to the economy or the defense of a country. Most NATO officers have graduate degrees in these fields, which explains much.
I went through university in Canada in the late eighties, electrical engineering. TA=teaching assistance, these people supervise labs, seminars and tutorials. They are graduate students. Obviously in engineering the subject matter was math, physics, chemistry and pure engineering. I had only ONE Canadian TA in 5 years of engineering, the rest were from overseas, mostly Chinese and Indian. The Canadians were all getting MBAs or law degrees. You might get a better salary with an MBA but its not that great for building up an economy.....or an Orechnick.
And so, here we are.
John
I live in Moscow region, and while it is likely not so bad in the South, the snow has in fact been heavy enough to cause problems. And yes the holidays DO slow things down, as strange as that might seem to thr American mind.