SITREP 7/8/25: Trump Flips on Ammo (Again?), as Russian Steamroller Bursts into Zaporozhye
This week brings us news that Trump has reversed on his weapons aid suspension to Ukraine—but is there more to this than meet’s the eye?
I believe so: everyone has jumped to conclusions assuming it means full resumption, when in reality Trump never specified what weapons—he merely said we’ll have to send them ‘some’ weapons, and defensive ones at that. It’s likely this could include just a few more Patriots and little else, more as performative gesture to once again appease neocons and relieve pressure from himself. That’s not to mention it’s not any new congressionally-approved weapons packages, but rather trickling resumption of the already dwindling Biden-inked deal.
One wonders how many Patriots the US can realistically even spare:
U.S. Patriot missile stockpiles are at just 25% of required levels. - The Guardian
➡️In 2023, the U.S. Army projected the need for 3,376 missiles to fully support its forces.
➡️A recent oversight memo raises that number to 13,733, citing heavy usage in Ukraine and the Middle East.
➡️Lockheed Martin, the sole producer of PAC-3 MSE missiles, made only 500 units last year. A new contract aims to boost output to 650.
➡️No clear timeline for replenishment has been announced.
Now Trump is also hinting at a ‘surprise’ for Putin, who’s made Trump very ‘unhappy’ recently with his defiant attitude toward the egomaniacal American leader. Once more, this is likely performative in nature and one doubts Trump will cultivate any serious sanctions effort against Russia; not that it would make a difference even if he did. Russia’s accelerating dominance over Ukraine is a runaway train that’s too late to stop.
New satellite photos show massive expansion at Russia’s Alabuga drone factory which produces the Gerans, and which may welcome an additional 25,000 North Korean workers, as per recent Western reports:
New satellite images of the industrial cluster in Yelabuga (Tatarstan), where Geranium-2 drones are produced, are being actively discussed. Judging by the published data, the industrial zone is actively expanding, which indicates plans to increase the production of UAVs of this type.
On the satellite image, the construction of 52 dormitories for workers is marked in yellow (a total of 72 are allegedly planned), and new production buildings are marked in red.
These expansions in Russian drone and missile production will ensure that Ukraine will drown in daily attacks that no global air defense missile production will be able to keep up with. Russia already launched another over 500-drone strike only a day or two after launching the first such attack late last week.
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The biggest news on the front is the announcement by various Ukrainian sources that Russia has launched a full blown offensive in Zaporozhye across the length of the entire front.
This has already resulted in some early breakthroughs.
The most notable was in Kamyanske, where Russian forces—as of the latest updates—reportedly succeeded in taking the entire town after several days of storming operations. It is not yet showing up on all maps because clearing operations are being carried out, but essentially this entire area was taken in a matter of days, and Russian forces have even begun entering the next settlement of Plavni to the north:
A powerful breakthrough in Kamenskoye in the Zaporizhzhia direction - our assault groups broke through up to 1.5 kilometers - Geolocation: 47.548071,35.349864
Soldiers from the 247th Regiment "Rostov Battalion" of the Russian Armed Forces liberated the village of Kamenskoye in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, raising the national flag and the unit's banner in the middle of the village.
Russian paratroopers from the 7th Airborne Assault Division, Group “Dnepr”, took part in the liberation of Kamenskoye on the Zaporizhzhia front.
A more detailed write-up of the assault:
In the second half of June 2025, Russian airborne units launched one of the most significant attacks on the southern defense line of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, breaking through the positions of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade near the Yanchekraq River near the village of Kamenskoye.
The line, which had been held by the Ukrainian side since April 2022, was considered one of the most stable sections of the front. The disruption of this defense and the establishment of a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Yanchekrak River means not just a tactical success, but the beginning of a change in the operational configuration of the entire Zaporizhzhia arc, according to Military Chronicle:
The offensive was led by the 247th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment of the 7th Guards Division. The attack took place early in the morning of June 23, after a massive air assault, using FABs and Kh-39 guided missiles launched from Ka-52M helicopters.
Immediately after that, the assault groups crossed the river near the destroyed road bridge, broke through the forward positions of the 230th battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and occupied the building of an elementary school, which was used by the Ukrainian side as a field communications center.
A counterattack launched on June 25 using JDAM guided bombs was unsuccessful: Russian units not only retained their positions, but also expanded them, turning the wedge point into a stable bridgehead up to 2 km wide and up to 600 meters deep.
At the same time, the Russian 429th Motorized Rifle Regiment continued to exert pressure on the southeastern part of Kamianske, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces had been holding a small bridgehead since December 2024, occupied by the Kraken Special Forces. The remnants of the 241st Territorial Brigade, consisting of the 204th, 207th, and 251st Battalions, are also active in the area. These units are currently facing the threat of being completely cut off and forced to retreat behind the Yanchekraq River.
The bridgehead created by the Russian landing force is key for future advancements westward towards Orekhov and the northwestern direction of Vasilyevka-Dneprorudnoye. The Ukrainian side believes that, given the fatigue, understaffing, and demoralization of Ukrainian reserves in the area, the establishment of a stable line on the northern bank of the Yanchekraq River could lead to the Russian forces reaching the operational rear of the Ukrainian defense line in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Other advances along the line were recorded, particularly in Mala Tokmachka where Russian forces captured nearly a third of the town from its eastern end.
Other areas just east of Kamyanske were also captured to straighten out the line:
Further east, in the last update we had reported how Russian forces began to approach Poddubne and Voskresenka, north of the Velyka Novosilka front. Now Russian forces have fully captured Poddubne and even expanded areas of control all around it:
For those wondering, this is along the old Marinka-Kurakhove-Bogatyr line:
Guardsmen of the 36th Motorised Rifle Brigade of the 29th Army raise the flag in Poddubnoye, west of Zirka South Donetsk direction .
Quote:
After occupying the first houses in Poddubnoye, the enemy's resistance was broken. Part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces abandoned their positions and fled the battlefield. During the fighting for the village, up to a company from the 37th Motorised Rifle Brigade and 141st Motorised Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were destroyed.
Between Pokrovsk and Toretsk, Russian forces expanded control around Razine, west of recently-captured Koptjeve. They continue to put encircling pressure on the Pokrovsk-Mirnograd agglomeration by now assaulting towards Novoekonomichne:
07.07.25 Krasnoarmeysk - Novoekonomicheskoe
Active combat operations in the Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) area.
Attack of the Russian Armed Forces by an armored column in the direction of Novoekonomicheskoe. Armored vehicles advance through residential areas and land troops in the southern part of the settlement. Shelling from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Advancement of the Russian Armed Forces 2.5 km on the eastern outreach of Krasnoarmeysk, assault units reaching new positions in Novoekonomicheskoe.
Ukrainian footage of a Russian column geolocated passing through Mykolaivka into neighboring Novoekonomichne:
The mine-roller-armed Russian ‘barn’ tanks can be seen shrugging off numerous drone hits, which proves the cope cage or ‘shed’ technology works. Troops are successfully dropped off to capture advanced positions in the settlement.
By the way, this is one of the reasons Russian tank losses have been trending toward record lows, as outlined in the last premium article. It’s not only that Russia has been using less tanks, but that the ‘grille’ or ‘barn’ technology has come a long way, and does actually succeed in protecting tanks. Even when tanks are disabled, the defensive cages and ‘barns’ result in the enemy drones not being able to penetrate with truly critical hits. They may disable the tank, but not in a catastrophic way, which allows engineers to still recover the tank much more easily than otherwise.
The other big update is that Russian forces made an unexpected breakthrough in the north Kharkov region, capturing a new chunk of Ukrainian territory just over the Russian border northwest of Kupyansk:
The plan will obviously be to connect the two areas into one common front, then eventually connect it with the Vovchansk front much farther west.
Some analysts believe Ukraine is now building a large new fallback line west of Kramatorsk for the eventuality that Donbass will fall:
More from Clement Molin’s analysis of satellite footage:
The two ukrainian lines forming together the "New Donbass Line" are both beyond all Donbass cities, Izioum, Lyman, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Droujkivka, Kostiantynivka, Dobropilla, Pokrovsk. The new one, in orange, is not yet very developped, only few positions and 1 to 2 ditches.
The general situation is that Russian forces are slowly effecting a cauldron around the key cities of Konstantinovka and the Pokrovsk-Mirnograd agglomeration:
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Now let’s cover a last few sundry items:
Dmitry Medvedev announced that Russia has seen 228,000 people sign up to the armed forces just through July 1st of this year alone. This amounts to exactly 38,000 per month:
Kiev Post recently quoted Zelensky as follows:
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In the last premium article featuring talk of Russian armor losses, a few people asked about Ukrainian armor losses and remaining tank numbers. Here is one source—Lost Armour—albeit considered a very conservative estimate with a far more stringent reporting criteria and standards.
Main battle tanks:
This is an AI translation, so for clarity, the three columns on the left are the total initial number of tanks, the number of losses, and then the number remaining. So under Abrams M1A1, there were 31 to start with, 21 lost, and 10 remaining.
According to this estimate, Ukraine would have about 624 total tanks remaining, while Russia reportedly fields somewhere in the 1,200 - 1,500 range at any given time, with constant replenishment from the thousands more in storage, and the ~300 yearly new T-90Ms being manufactured. Ukraine, on the other hand, is not receiving any new ones that we know of, and thus any losses continue plummeting its number of total tanks.
As stated, this list appears to be conservative given that some believe virtually all Abrams have now been destroyed, and from memory, I recall at least four or more Challengers being destroyed rather than two as shown above.
IFVs are next:
As can be seen a bit more than half of the 300 Bradleys have been destroyed, though Ukraine may retain around 1,000+ total IFVs, the bulk of which are BMP-1s and 2s.
MRAPS and APCs shows the highest number, as these are essentially infinite in NATO countries and can be supplied forever:
More significant are mobile artillery units:
It shows 646 self-propelled artillery of various kinds still remaining, though it must be taken into account that: 1. it’s a very conservative methodology in regard to counting losses—for instance, I’m almost positive I’ve seen far more than merely 3 PzH 2000s destroyed; and 2. a huge portion of those assets would be inoperable at any given time due to maintenance issues. Again, with the PzH 2000 in particular, we’ve seen in previous Western publications that a large number of them have broken down on the front. Out of a possible 646, I’d wager 350-400 active at any given time, if not less.
And lastly airforce assets, for those interested:
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The director of Defense Priorities think tank states that Ukraine’s biggest problem is not shortage of weapons, but that of manpower. She correctly infers that ‘more weapons’ will not solve Ukraine’s issues, when there are no people to man those weapons.
She makes the good point that Iran and China would love to see US continue dumping its treasure into the black hole of Ukraine.
On that note, China’s FM Wang Yi recently dropped a bombshell, for the first time vocalizing China’s commitment to Russia’s SMO:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing cannot afford a Russian loss in Ukraine because it fears the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
Wang made a further humorous statement, rejecting that China was ‘materially’ supporting Russia because if it did so, the conflict would have ended long ago. A bit of Chinese hubris or…reality?
More and more recently clues have surfaced of China’s support, including Ukrainian channels finding various Chinese parts in new Russian Geran drones, Chinese lasers and other items flooding the Russian frontline, etc. Most are aware that the vast majority of lower end Russian EW systems on the front for the past couple years have been from China, and this goes for many other things like communications, satellite ‘GPS’ transceivers in drones, etc. That’s not to even mention the transports like DesertCross 1000 vehicles and the flood of motorcycles hitting the front. And then there’s the whole backend, with recent reports indicating mass Chinese machining tool transfers for the expansion of Russian tank and barrel production, amongst other things; the list can go on and on.
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Favorite Austrian Colonel Reiser also added his two cents recently, agreeing with the think tanker above—Ukraine has too few soldiers:
And also from Austria:
“Our most desired outcome is Russia’s defeat, but the Ukrainians are taking heavy losses,” said Gustav Gressel, military expert at the Austrian National Defence Academy in Vienna.
“It would of course be wonderful if they [the Ukrainians] actually won this war. A humiliating defeat for Moscow would lead to a new political Russia. That’s the most desirable outcome. However, in the fourth year of the war, the question arises: ‘The Ukrainians are exhausted, they’ve taken huge losses in this fight — are they even still capable of achieving that?’ What Europeans can do — even without the U.S. — is at least prevent Ukraine’s defeat.”
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Arestovich made waves with a recent video where he gave a truthful breakdown of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
He admits that Russia could end Ukraine easily in a month or two if it really wanted, but that Putin instead has chosen to keep the war to a minimum ‘background’ so that the country’s development can take precedence. In fact, Putin has miraculously threaded the needle in this way thus far, managing the impossible: somehow simultaneously keeping the war in the ‘background’, while also elevating it to a new national mythos, centering the entire development of the country around it.
It’s a bizarre contradiction and paradox in one. Do I personally agree with this approach? Not necessarily, and share many of the concerns from the critics of this ‘half way’ policy; but you can’t deny that it is working. The only question is, whether a different ‘sledgehammer’ approach would have worked even better—or at least more quickly, with less lives lost.
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Ex-Aidar deputy commander Ihor Mosiychuk leaked a document that was reportedly given to him by an unnamed Ukrainian government minister. The ‘secret’ document is claimed to concern the relocation of the Kiev government to the west of the country:
In the aftermath, Mosiychuk states that Kiev claimed the document is fake, but he reiterates it is genuine—straight from his TG channel:
The authorities are preparing to move to the Western regions of our country
Here is such a document that was sent out today by the Cabinet of Ministers to government bodies and state structures. It states that a Decision has been made and the corresponding Orders are being issued to prepare places and premises in the territorial divisions of the western regions of Ukraine for the placement and work of ministries and departments if necessary.
Important! The document is genuine, it was provided by one of the recipients who exercise government powers.
There is a big commotion in the Cabinet of Ministers now, they are trying to create a version that this document is a fake. And all because they made a colossally gross mistake - they did not assign a secrecy label to the document, which is why officials and officials began to share it among themselves and other people. That is: officials began to warn loved ones about the possible threats that the authorities are considering, confirming this with this document.
We’ve already heard leaks a while back that this would be the case—but why now?
There are a few speculative possibilities: recall rumors of Russia attempting another Kiev push after the Zapad exercises in Belarus this coming September. If not that, then it’s possible Kiev fears that after Sumy, the Russian Army could steam roll westward to Kiev.
There are continued rumors about another 30,000 North Korean troops, and now also Laotian troops, coming to Sumy. Most likely all this is fake, and Russia will not be marching down to Kiev any time soon, but it’s something to keep an eye on, particularly after recent rumors that Ukraine was forced to pull reserves from all along the Belarusian border to bolster defenses in Sumy region.
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Lastly, the most absurd thing you may hear all year: CNN reveals leaked audio of Trump claiming that he ‘scared away’ both Putin and Xi by telling them he would bomb Moscow and Beijing. This was reported last year, but only through hearsay—now there’s a direct leaked recording of it. Of all Trump’s most flagrantly egomaniacal excesses, this may top them all:
What’s the difference between “going into” Ukraine on Trump’s watch, and already being there, bombing it daily? Russia is there now, exerting its dominance, all under his watch—why doesn’t Trump deliver on his empty threat now? It seems Bibi’s leash may have deprived the bronzer addict’s brain of oxygen—he may need to loosen it up a notch or two; and put the ball gag back in while he’s at it, to save us all the expectorating delusions and embarrassment.
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>It’s a bizarre contradiction and paradox in one. Do I personally agree with this approach? Not necessarily, and share many of the concerns from the critics of this ‘half way’ policy; but you can’t deny that it is working. The only question is, whether a different ‘sledgehammer’ approach would have worked even better—or at least more quickly, with less lives lost.
The real problem is not that Putin is waging a half-assed (not)war because somehow he sat down and did a complicated calculation that this is the optimal way to balance competing priorities, all in the interest of Russia's future, and he had no other choice.
It is that everything points to Putin deciding on waging a half-assed (not)war due to split loyalties on his part and that of other people in the Kremlin, and due to pressure from various other forces with influence there, none of which has anything to do with a genuine concern about Russia's future, precisely the opposite most of the time.
This is what the Putin fanboys in the West cannot understand for four years now, even though it is all right in front of their eyes.
We just witnessed a stark illustration of what I am talking about a couple weeks ago. He was directly confronted with the question about not supporting Iran sufficiently, and what was his answer? He mentioned the "Russian speakers" in Israel.
But he never similarly mentioned the actual Russians in the Donbass and the rest of Ukraine for the many years during which they were mercilessly bombed and slaughtered by Ukro-NATO-Nazi thugs. He tried to push them into Ukraine instead so that he didn't have to be bothered with them.
He also never mentions the daily reign of terror all along the contact line and increasingly deep (e.g. today the Ukronazis bombed the river beach in Kursk and killed three people there, but that is the daily norm now and nobody pays any attention to such cases anymore).
But the "Russian speakers" in Israel, 99% of them hating Russia with a passion and wanting to see it destroyed? Those Putin is very publicly concerned about.
And not just publicly concerned -- look at his actions. Did he ever seriously act to protect his own population? Only when the situation threatened to become disruptive for his own rule (had the Ukronazis taken over the Donbass in March 2022, there would have been millions of refugees streaming into Rostov and Voronezh, which would have been a bit of a problem) was some action taken, otherwise everyone can bomb, invade, kill, rape, pillage, Putin doesn't care. Did he seriously act to defend Israel's interests? All the time, consistently, for many years. It is why Syria no longer exists.
Etc. etc. etc.
What doesn't Trump flip on?????