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This week was another week of marginal but real Russian territorial gains at very substantial cost, against smaller Ukrainian gains of ground at smaller cost. Overall, the Russians seem to have moved troops into and gained effective control of about 65-90 square kilometers (25-35 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, with about 70% of those gains in the Pokrovsk sector. This week, Ukrainian assault infantry regiments deployed to the city with the mission of hunting Russian infiltration teams down. There were smaller Russian gains/probes-not-repelled in the Zaporizhzhia region around Mala Tokmachka. There was a single Russian battalion-sized assault in the Mala Tokmachka sector on Monday-Tuesday; the Ukrainians seem to have cut it to pieces. From what I gather, an element of 58th Combined Arms Army advanced on positions held by 47th Mechanized Brigade and elements of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade – these are both highly-experienced units, and the 47th is one of the best-armed in the ZSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) – and the Russians ran into mines, then Javelin anti-tank missiles along with Bayraktar TB2 strikes. This is interesting as Bayraktar strikes during a ground battle are pretty rare; if the report is real, then that’s a sign of weak Russian air defense in the Zaporizhzhia sector. The report is “70%” Russian losses, but no details on what, except that it includes armored vehicles and soldiers. Overall, the statisticians generally are tracking 15-20% more Russian casualties this week than last week. In a possibly related development, the Russian recruiting command moved to mobilize reservists for duty, if you believe them, inside Russia on anti-drone duty. Here’s an article about that. On the Ukrainian side, the gains were generally still around Dobropillia, where the Ukrainians have what appears to be a few hundred to several hundred Russian infantry surrounded in three pockets and cut off from supply, the main advance being the liberation of a village called Kucheriv Yar. There were scattered reports of 50 Russian POWs captured along with the village, but I have yet to see really convincing proof, although an image did surface. It would make sense as some of those Russian soldiers could have been isolated in the woods there since August, but again, I have seen reports but not evidence. What we do generally know is that a recon element from the 80th Separate Air Assault Brigade was the first into Kucheriv Yar, along with a separate recon battalion (the 132nd, they want us to be sure everyone knows that) working for 7th Airborne Corps, led the assault and captures. The attack was pretty standard attack doctrine with drone overwatch and house-to-house clearing, but conditions were rain/fog. The defenders seem mostly to have been infantry teams holed up in buildings and basements from the 9th Motorized Brigade. There was a flag-raised-for-the-drone-to-photograph in the center of the village taken in Kucheriv Yar by the 132nd that was published on the Ukrainian-loyal (and maybe state-run) Krymsky Veter Telegram channel. I tend to believe it, but at this point, I can’t say I’ve seen geo-location. Russia bombards Ukraine The Russian bombardment campaign vs. Ukraine’s power grid is doing damage, and it was Kyiv’s turn (again) on Wednesday-Thursday. Part of this was written on a computer running on batteries/power bank. Where I am in Kyiv since that strike: power has been off for about 12 hours out of 24. Some neighborhoods in Kyiv are better off, but pretty much nowhere is someone outside of government/critical infrastructure able to turn on the lights whenever he/she wants. However, the metro has continued to run, and some street lights stay on during the blackouts. The attack was 28 missiles (including Kinzhal hypersonic and ballistic types) and over 400 drones (Shahed/Geran-2)’; the Ukrainians intercepted about 80% of everything, meaning really more than 90% of the drones and less than half of the missiles. Six killed, including a mother and her two children. There were 30-50 injured. The main target seems to have been power generation infrastructure in the south of the city, following a strike last week targeting power generation infrastructure in the north of the city. But Brovary on Thursday was hit again as well. I read the attack damaged/put offline about 10-15 % of Kyiv’s power generation capacity, but this has been complicated, as I understand it, by more damaging attacks hitting Chernihiv to the north of Kyiv, so the Kyiv grid now has to take up some of the Chernihiv load. I think it’s worth mentioning that at the Chornobyl nuclear power station there is still a single reactor, number one, that on paper the Ukrainians could refuel and put back on line. The rest of the world doesn’t care so much about power problems inside Ukraine , but they’re very worried about Chornobyl reactors; fortunately for the rest of the world, it would take years and a lot of money to put that reactor online. But in retrospect, particularly when sitting in the dark in modern Kyiv, switching the reactor off voluntarily in 2006 – was on the ground for that, actually – does seem like the rest of the world did better by that than Ukraine. This is not to imply the Russians are trying to turn out the lights only in Kyiv. On Oct 19-20, it was Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Kremenchuk – targeting things like the Konotop/Nizhyn substations (Sumy/Chernihiv); the Zmiiv TPP (Kharkiv), and the Kremenchuk powerplant (Poltava). As noted above, this caused shortages in the east of the country and cascading blackouts. Chernihiv was targeted again on Oct. 21 with 51 drones and two ballistic missiles. The targets were the city heating plant and the city power plant; this blacked out most of the city (and shut off water and heating) until the next day. On Oct. 22, besides Kyiv, Odesa, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro got hit. The power losses were worst in Kyiv and Odesa, but I get the impression – someone correct me if I’m wrong – that in Odesa the recovery was faster than in Kyiv. Oh, in Kyiv, in the last raid, some of the Shaheds were flying really low. Nastier Russian glide bombs On the technological side, the Russian Air Force seems to have begun receiving steady supplies of glide bombs that fly 180 kilometers (112 miles), the old threat window was maybe 60-80 kilometers (37-50 miles). As a matter of practice, at the old range, the Russian bombers could launch bombs with some care at targets not defended by Patriots. The new range means that a bigger slice of Ukraine can now get pounded by the Russians, and that if the Russian bombers are careful, they can probably also launch bombs at cities even defended by Patriots. This is bad news everywhere, but it’s worst for Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Odesa. It’s not clear yet how many of these long-range bomb kits the Russians might be able to use, but in a typical day, the Russian air force drops 150-200 bombs on Ukrainian targets, according to the Ukrainian military. They’re rocket-propelled with engines from China, the country that sends Russia no military components. Screenshot from the analyst Serhiy Flesh pointing out that it’s the same deal for engines used by Shahed drones, also made in China. The first glide bomb strike ever hit the western part of the Odesa region this morning; this confirmed by local authorities. ADDITION: A later report said air defenses shot down two of the three glide bombs, third one hit a field. Ukraine bombards Russia – It was a blast this week Sorry about the headline. I kept having to rewrite this section because I wanted it to start out with information about the most impressive strike this week, and that kept changing. On Saturday drones flew something like 1,300-1,400 kilometers (808-870 miles) and hit the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant in Russia’s Orenburg Oblast, near the border with Kazakhstan. This is the world’s biggest gas processing facility. This was a long-range strike but not nearly a record-breaker; right now it’s around 1,700-1,800 kilometers (1,056-1,119 miles). Gazprom operates the site. It processes about 45 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas annually. This is about 10% of Russia’s total output. Russian authorities acknowledged a single hit, but said air defenses intercepted most drones. OSINT footage (NASA) showed a pretty big fire on Saturday, and on Tuesday, another substantial fire seems to have broken out again. Four-part image about the Orenburg strike; it’s worth noting that the next day, the Ukrainians hit an oil refinery nearby. Ukraine milblogger reports and Russian energy industry reports say the Ukrainian drones set a workshop on fire, damaged a gas processing and purification unit, and put about 10-15% of the entire plant offline. Because of the strike and shut-downs associated with repairs and emergency response, the plant suspended gas intake from Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field (co-operated by Chevron, Shell, Eni, and KazMunayGas); and THAT reduced gas output by the country Kazakhstan by about 25-30%. Partial production resumed by the end of the week but a full fix will take days and possibly weeks. Then on Tuesday, I had to pick. One was a drone attack against a munitions plant in the Chelyabinsk region, in the “other” (besides Tula-Izhevsk) Russian military manufacturing heartland. A place called Kopeysk, the factory is called Plastmass. Fifteen dead, 80 injured. This was close to 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) and by my handy-dandy Ukraine-Bombards-Russia List, the second-longest drone strike by either side of the war. At least one drone smacked Section №2 of the plant (the assembly area for detonators and ammunition), triggering an initial explosion followed by a massive detonation that spread over 6,500 square meters of factory territory. The internet tells me that’s 2.51 square miles, the equivalent of 1,215 football fields, or the entire city territory of Vail, Colorado. On fire and exploding. Videos showed a bright flash, fireball, and shock wave shattering nearby windows and igniting secondary fires. Multiple buildings and production halls were damaged, fires consumed parts of the facility, and debris and blast waves damaged other parts. Casualty counts were still climbing on Friday, which, we in Ukraine know, is usually an indicator that people were buried in debris and their corpses are being discovered as the debris is picked through. Reportedly, production stopped completely. This site is a munitions manufacturer dating back to World War II and recently modernized. When operational, it supplies 10-15% of all of Russia’s artillery and tank munitions. For the record, local officials said minor damage was caused by falling debris. Image from Ukrainian OSINTers confirming the location and damage; if Ukraine were fully under Russian control, content like that would be suppressed, of course. The “column B” option on Tuesday was, however, pretty much just as impressive: a combined drone/missile strike against the “Bryansk Chemical Plant JSC,” in the city of Seltso. It’s about 350-400 kilometers (217-249 miles) from likely Ukrainian launch sites, and according to some reports, besides the drones, British Storm Shadow cruise missiles were fired. My jury is still out but I’m picky about evidence. As some of you probably remember, Storm Shadows are more effective than drones because of pretty much everything: they fly faster, they evade anti-aircraft better, they are more accurate, their warheads are bigger, they are designed to punch into hard targets before blowing up, and they’re much more difficult to jam. There is an additional section below about US and British complicity in this strike, but it clearly was a GenShtab/high-priority operation that Kyiv had been planning for some time. Russian officials said nothing got through air defenses, but a few workers were slightly injured by falling debris. Unfortunately for that narrative, Ukrainian assessments, OSINT footage, and local Saransk social media going something like berserk suggest there were multiple hits, explosions, and fires. Geolocated videos showed fireballs, smoke plumes, and blasts. Supposedly, the explosions lasted more than an hour. The worst hit I read was storage facilities for propellants. Damage covered 4-5 square kilometers (you do the football field math). Production paused for one to two weeks, reportedly. The plant makes rocket fuel and explosives for missiles and artillery. As for rocket fuel, something like 10-20% of all of Russia’s production. But I don’t have a clear picture of the damage. The point to this section is, none of the foregoing is about oil refineries, which is the next section. Once oil refinery strikes are taken into account, all told, the week Oct. 17-24 by the numbers was probably Ukraine’s most successful week bombarding Russia, and Russia’s worst, of the entire war. Seriously, there really is no other way to interpret it; Spider Web caused more military damage, but if the target is Russian war-making capacity damaged or destroyed, there’s no seven-day period that I know of that comes close. I’d be curious to hear if that basic factoid of extraordinarily heavy Ukrainian damage done this week to Russian energy infrastructure and munitions manufacturing managed to exit Ukraine. Kind of doubt it. And the oil refineries If one were a Russian policy-maker and rational, the unnerving thing about this week’s ammunition factory strikes, is that this week was absolutely not about just Ukrainian ammunition factory strikes. Here’s the updated strike list for the past seven days: Vologograd, Balashkovo power station, fires, Oct. 17 Veshkaima, Power Substation, fires and outages, Oct. 18 Gvardeyske Crimea, two fuel depots, ZSU drones, Oct. 18 Dzhankoi Crimea, fuel depot, ZSU drones, air defense radar in Yevpatoria also taken down, Oct. 18 Orenburg, world’s biggest gas refinery, Oct. 19 Novokuybshevsk oil refinery, Samara, Oct. 19 ATAN fuel base, Gvardeyske, Crimea, five to six explosions, fires, Oct. 21 *Hungarian MOL refinery, Lukoil, processes Druzhba oil, Oct. 21 *Romanian Petrotel Lukoil, 2.5 million tons, one of the biggest in the country, Oct. 21 Dagestan, Makhachkala oil refinery, cracking tower hit, fires, Oct. 22 Ryazan, Rosnetft oil refinery, 14th UAS, explosions and fires, Oct. 23 Rostov region, Novoshakhtinsk power station/refinery power, Oct. 23 Krasnodar region, Ilyskiy Oil Refinery, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), unconfirmed Oct. 24 Krasnodar Krai, Afipskiy Oil Refinery, UAVs, Oct. 24 * — This is obviously outside Ukraine and not by drones. Technically, we have no idea what caused the fires, but every one of the refineries is Lukoil-owned/associated, and attacking Lukoil production capacity where and when possible is Ukrainian state policy. The most likely cause is Ukrainian agents, and if I saw a report that the fire was accidental, I would read it critically. After 11 years of Russian boots on Ukrainian ground, the US sanctions major Russian oil companies seriously On Thursday, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, targeting their ability to export crude oil. This affects about half of all of Russia’s total oil exports. The sanctions announcement also targeted a mess of subsidiary companies and threatened follow-up sanctions not just on companies trading with firms on the sanction list, but on banks transferring money to or from companies on the sanctions list. Based on the latest news reports I’ve seen, the Indians and Chinese have halted imports of product to those countries “temporarily pending review,” which is a euphemism for “until we figure out a workaround.” The Russian media took the position that Russia is resilient and, in any case, much cleverer at evading sanctions than the Americans are at enforcing them. Dmitriy Medvedev said it was definitely an act of war and the US is evil, but all will be better when Russia wipes Ukraine off the map. This allowed Putin to pose as the good cop and say the US move was unfortunate and didn’t help US-Russia relations. I have not heard much out of Turkey at all, which is significant because they are very substantial Russian oil importers. I take this to mean the Turks are most exposed because of supply streams from Rosneft and Lukoil, and now they really don’t know what to do. As to the markets, usually the best indicator of what’s the future, Lukoil and Rosneft shares tanked 3.3%, and 3.08% overnight. Worth noting, this week the EU banned import of Russian LNG, or more exactly, obliged an end to short-term contracts in six months, and long-term contracts from the start of 2027. Another 117 tankers were added to the sanctioned shadow tanker fleet of, most people estimate, around 1,000-1,200 ships worldwide. Also, more limits on the movements of Russian diplomats and a ban to Russian crypto-servers between Russia and the EU. Gloves off, but it’s not OK to say gloves off Two developments this week that point to other ways the West is more fed up with Russia than in the past. First, apropos the “Storm Shadow” strike mentioned earlier, Mr. Picky would point out that the rated range of a Storm Shadow, at least the ones we know were exported to Ukraine, is about 250 kilometers (155 miles). This makes the strike against the ammo depot at 350-400 kilometers (218-249 miles), if indeed Storm Shadows were used, impossible. However, there ARE Storm Shadows that reach out to 450 kilometers (280 miles) – but supposedly Britain never exported those because London judged they might be needed to defend Great Britain. I am not saying Whitehall just changed its stance, but if it did, then we have just seen Great Britain escalate against Russia. In the past, Storm Shadows in Ukrainian hands didn’t reach 400 kilometers (249 miles). Also, under-the-radar, but as for me an almost as important development this week was, apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) the US has removed the strings it has had on Ukrainian strikes in Russian territory with Western weapons. The White House denied it, of course, and said what the Ukrainians do with weapons sold to NATO by the US and then sent onwards to Ukraine is no business of the US. This is hogwash because in order for the Western cruise missiles that aren’t American to work – this is the British Storm Shadow and the French SCALP – the missiles need targeting data from US satellites, and the US has refused to provide that, for strikes in Russia, for years. So, if the Storm Shadow strike took place, then the British upped the ante by putting a longer-ranged missile in Ukrainian hands, and the Americans upped the ante by signing on and delivering targeting data for the missiles to use. Trump can write on social media all he wants, but the bottom line is Storm Shadows blew up a Bryansk chemical/explosives plant on Tuesday, the damage, explosions and fires there were epic, and either those missiles had American targeting data or the Ukrainians modified the missiles with secret extra-range fuel tanks, and then shot those missiles into the blue and rolled the military version of sevens about fifty times in a row, and hit what they were aiming at without US targeting data. There is zero chance that strike took place, if it was with Storm Shadows, without direct and very recent British and US involvement, including planning. Good news for Ukraine, bad news for Fat Amy, and Ukraine buys Saab This section leads off with an image of the US-made F-35 “Lightning II,” a stealth aircraft best known for its impressive electronics suites and high maintenance costs. The slang term for the F-35 among airmen is “Fat Amy,” perhaps a reference to the stubby fuselage, and perhaps a reference to a tendency towards being a hanger queen. Keeping the F-35 in mind, another news item that came down the pike this week, which may have been the origin of the WSJ article, was that our excellent bro boy Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delegated authority for disbursing US weaponry to NATO (and so potentially to Ukraine) away from the odious White House staffer Eldridge Colby, who hates Ukraine, to General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO Supreme Allied Commander. I have no doubt that that Pentagon decision followed after pressure by NATO states to the US that if the US doesn’t free up the arms stream to Ukraine, then NATO states certainly won’t buy US-made weapons for Ukraine, and Pete Hegseth may not care about Ukraine, but he absolutely cares about Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. This is not small change – because of US political strings, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal cancelled orders for about 110-140 F-35 jets, and Canada is seriously thinking about cutting its order from 88 to 44 aircraft, and India just ordered 114 Rafales, so talks to sell F-35s to India are now dead in the water. This amounts to the loss of TWO YEARS of Lockheed Martin revenue from F-35 airframe sales, and a total loss of decades of income from maintenance and upgrades. Another way to look at those figures is, there have been about 1,200 F-35s made each at a flyaway cost of $80-$100 million; because of lost sales thanks to, well, US policy towards international arms sales in the past nine to ten months, that’s a you-do-the-math loss of revenue to one of the biggest military production companies on Earth. So I assume Hegseth’s reversal of what he told NATO in February – the US wants nothing to do with the Russo-Ukraine War and neither support nor arms either side, the war is Europe’s problem – is directly linked to people Hegseth pays attention to, i.e. the Lockheed Martin corporate lobbyist or similar, to shut up about hating Ukraine so that American arms manufacturing can keep making money and keep donating a portion of it to Republican candidates. And the Ukrainians? For one thing, you can look at how the Ukrainians are going about dealing with another major weapons need: cruise missiles. That’s Ukrainian behavior already. So, notwithstanding Hegseth’s scrambling, it looks like the Pentagon lost another big F-35 deal. In Ukraine, or more exactly in Sweden during a Ukrainian presidential visit, on Tuesday, the logical outcome of White House “Ukraine Sucks We Hate Them” national policy reached the public domain: Ukraine’s first big commitment to long-term combat jet acquisitions will avoid North America products entirely, not F-35 Fat Amys (Amies?), nor F-16s or -15s or 18s. The Ukrainians actually are pretty consistent in big strategy. They have decided the US is an unreliable ally and US weaponry isn’t worth dealing with US politics. Ukraine is going to buy Saab. More exactly, an agreement was inked that Ukraine intends to acquire, for money, 120-150 Gripen fighter jets over the next several years. The Swedish media was told a few Ukrainian pilots are already training on the jet and the first aircraft should reach Ukrainian skies “sometime in 2026,” but that this was a long-term contract basically aiming to create a modern jet backbone for the future Ukrainian Air Force. It also means that, unless someone donates the aircraft, as of Tuesday Ukraine has quit consideration of the Lockheed Martin F-16, of which Ukraine flies probably about 12-18 older aircraft. Lockheed Martin makes a pretty modern F-16; they would certainly argue that when Ukraine gets around to buying upgraded fighter aircraft, the latest-model F-16 would be logical because Ukrainian pilots and ground crew are already used to the airframe. The Ukrainian view on that sales pitch seems pretty clear: America is an unreliable supplier willing to compromise Ukrainian national security, better a long-term relationship with the Swedes. Most aviation geeks will point out that the F-35 is a 5th Generation stealth aircraft that a Gripen wouldn’t see before the F-35 killed it. Most Ukrainian aviation geeks would point out that that may be true, but, the “stealth” aircraft Russia flies aren’t close to F-35s, and the Gripen is specifically designed to operate against Russian aircraft, and the F-35 isn’t. I read in some news reports that financing will come essentially from interest earned by Russian assets frozen in Swedish banks, which is a classic win-win; the Ukrainians shell out nothing, and the Swedes use Russian money to help Saab generate income. But that is speculation, not confirmed. Now that’s kind of shameless – Crimea partisans out secret Russian underwater naval munitions bunker This is really more a sign of rising “partisan” confidence than a proper military development. This week, the Atesh partisans, who may well be Ukrainian army special operations guys wearing berets and striped blue shirts and carrying Sten guns and smoking filterless cigarettes, the better to present as civilian partisans, announced they had spotted one of the few surviving Russian assault ships tying up in Sevastopol. To refresh you, at the start of the war, Russia used about four or six ships like this to land on Ukraine’s south coast to capture Berdyansk and Melitopol, but pretty soon, Ukraine started sinking them. By about mid-2023, their job was to act as emergency ferries carrying military goods between Crimea and the mainland. According to the Atash guys, one of these amphibious ships tied up at a pier near Suharnaya Bay, and stood still long enough, with insufficient security, for the “partisans” to photograph the ship being loaded with missiles and shells from a “secret” underground bunker. This loading operation was probably part of a continuing shell game the Russians run with the few ships in Sevastopol, by moving ships from one pier to the next daily, so that the Ukrainians can’t get a fix and hit it. Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
