SITREP 9/10/24: European Antinomy Squeezes Zelensky from Both Sides as Kursk Front Crumbles – Simplicius
Wed 9:26 am +01:00, 11 Sep 2024 There’s a lot of disparate but significant information today, so let’s start off with the biggest developments. Firstly, the swell of information pointing to Zelensky’s desperate push to end the war continues via multiple European publications. Spanish EFE writes the following:
Interestingly, it mentions Zelensky grabbing parts of Kursk to thwart Russia’s plans to annex currently occupied Ukrainian territory, which could logically point to the Kursk operation being Zelensky’s last defiant charge against European partners, rather than Russia. Knowing that Europe was slowly inching toward forcing Ukraine to give up territories in order to effect an armistice, Zelensky may have tried to circumvent the move by preemptively grabbing some Kursk land to hold for ransom as insurance against this. And how do we know Europe was moving toward this? Further confirmation comes by way of the next piece, Italy’s La Repubblica: The gist is the following:
Here’s a non-paywalled Ukrainian source on the same story. Tass reports that the Kremlin has responded via Peskov to the proposal, but only insofar that they are willing to look at it:
According to this report, Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik outlines Zelensky’s final ‘peace plan’ as the following:
This is all pretty much what I outlined in the last paywalled article. Today’s drone strikes on Moscow are a major part of this, meant to cause Russia to overreact in such a way as to spur NATO to accede to these demands for greater involvement in the war. But let’s take a look once more at why, precisely, Zelensky is in such desperate straits. We have another sampling of the latest MSM headlines which paints a broad portrait of the AFU’s ongoing toboggan into catastrophe: The first from The Economist shares how an entire company of 100 men was “wiped out in three days” according to a soldier from the 59th Brigade: Pay close attention to the Russian fire-recon-complex getting its dues: Though the article does double back on the laughable claim that “as many as 18 Russians die to dislodge 2 Ukrainian defenders”, the actual Ukrainian officer is quoted as saying something a bit different:
This sounds to me like it’s the Ukrainians that are aware they are sacrificing their manpower and territory under the assumption that they’re bleeding Russia’s “resources”, which one assumes to mean equipment and materiel.
This is another interesting admission that flies in the face of current dogma—that Russians have the drone and tech advantage:
What differentiates my reporting from some other people who rely on hearsay, hyperbole, or simple guessing is I let the sources speak for themselves; the above is straight from the horse’s mouth. The next report comes by way of CNN: It also speaks of the horrors of the Pokrovsk direction for the AFU:
Again we hear the same timeworn tale:
The more eye-opening admission pertains to the utterly widespread nature of desertion in the AFU’s ranks:
The majority of mobilized soldiers are leaving their positions? Mobilized are now the majority of the entire armed forces, so that can’t be a good sign.
Up next is Globe and Mail: Which makes an important revelation—that Pokrovsk is one of the most strategically significant points of all Donbass:
Here’s an interesting discursion. The above commander states they’re outnumbered 5:1. The earlier article’s commander stated on his front that ratio is 10:1. Even pro-Ukrainian commenters could not hold back from asking the obvious questions under Rob Lee’s post of the above article: They bring up a great point: Ukraine was billed as having parity with Russia, or according to some sources, was even outnumbering Russia in total troops as of last year, but suddenly everywhere it’s 5:1 or even 10:1 in Russia’s favor, yet we’re meant to believe Russia is the one taking 18:2 losses? You cannot be a serious, thinking adult at this point and possibly believe that Ukraine is taking less losses than Russia. By the way, one of the other important takeaways about Pokrovsk was highlighted by another top pro-UA analyst:
This illustrates just how important Pokrovsk is to the region logistically and strategically, given its nature as a railway hub that feeds the entire region’s grouping. — Which segues us into the battlefield developments. I’ll leave larger updates for next time, as this Sitrep has enough geopolitical content to cover. But needless to say the Ukrainian front continues to collapse all over the place. Ugledar is almost entirely encircled and by the looks of it could fall in the near future, as Vodiane was totally captured just northeast of it. Even all the way in the north Russian forces have made big gains in the Kupyansk direction. It’s now universally recognized that Russia’s Pokrovsk campaign did not stall at all but merely transferred its momentum to the flanks in order to first widen the wedge and flatten out the front. This has resulted in big pushes that have nearly surrounded Ukriansk just to the south: More territory was captured west of Krasnogorovka (red circle), leaving the entire cauldron tightening on the AFU ever-further (yellow): In fact, my thesis was corroborated by Rada MP Mariana Bezuglaya who wrote on her social media that Syrsky even intentionally began to play with information reporting so as to obfuscate the true nature of the Pokrovsk direction, vis-a-vis Russia’s rerouting southward toward Kurakhove:
But most painful of all for the Ukrainians was a huge counterattack long in the making succeeded for the Russians in the Kursk area. The 51st Guards Paratroopers of the 106st Airborne Division based in Tula launched a huge armored assault south of the embattled Korenevo, reportedly liberating half a dozen settlements like Krasnooktobyarsk (Red October) and Snagost. Here is footage of their column, followed by the POWs they took in Snagost at the end of the video—the far end shows a graphic segment of those who did not surrender: The above armored charge was geolocated here:
Or a wider view of the hedgerow line they traversed: They had to pontoon over rivers to carry out the feat, as per AFU: On that note, an interesting new video of a Ukrainian from the 82nd Brigade of the AFU who claims that they were tasked with committing terrorism on Russian Kursk territory:
It’s impossible to say if he’s telling the truth or speaking under duress, but it certainly goes toward validating everything I’ve been writing about Zelenksy’s last-ditch desperate move being to get Russia to overreact and ‘declare war’ so as to wake NATO up and force them to intervene in some way. — A few other notes on Ukrainian losses thereof: Putin gave us a hint in his new interview of Russia’s overall strategy when he stated that Ukraine is taking such massive losses that he expects their armed forces to simply collapse in the near future: Note he specifically states “which is what we are striving for.” That is one of the first explicit affirmations from Putin himself of Russia’s total overriding military strategy in Ukraine. Rather than capturing territory or symbolic cities like Kiev, or banking on some political settlement, here he is stating that Russia expects the entire AFU to collapse from the sheer weight of their losses. This was underscored in a new interview with Shoigu, wherein he stated that Ukraine is now suffering 2,000+ casualties per day. Although Rezident_UA channel claims the losses as follows:
Apti, by the way, also gave his thoughts that Ukraine will make another big attempt to get as close to Kursk nuclear plant as possible to get within shelling range of it and hold Russia under nuclear blackmail: Lastly, this is a must-watch video when it comes to losses. The footage is said to be from a GoPro camera recovered from a liquidated AFU member in the Kursk region, though it is not graphic and only shows vehicular losses. But it gives an amazing view of the sheer losses the AFU is taking there, with the original commentary being that the Ukrainians are in a state of loss, shock, and confusion as they are simply hit from every side—recall the previous video of the ‘road of death’ showing countless destroyed vehicles spanning miles: Did not find video Now there’s been another confirmation about the scale of Ukraine’s losses in the Poltava institute strike a week ago:
The commander of a Ukrainian recon unit states that the strike wiped out the entire elite cadre of Ukraine’s air force personnel: Did not find video In fact, Ukraine now admits to high-ranking officials being eliminated in that strike:
Check the site above for photos of their funerals as proof. A final noteworthy clip for this section:
I think there’s very little chance of the entire Donbass falling by October, but the general gist of his outlook seems correct. But it does segue us into another important matter. He mentions diplomacy which inspires an interesting thought. There is now a lot of talk about negotiations, and there is a chance that Putin is literally waiting for Trump to come into office to create enough diplomatic pressure on Ukraine to make large concessions. The problem is, the West is now only beginning to ‘warm Ukraine up’ to the idea of giving up the taken territories, but Russia’s official demands are now much more than that, and include drastic demilitarization, amongst other things. It also brings up the thorny point of the new Shoigu interview making the rounds. The pro-Russian side has been whisked into an uproar over Shoigu’s apparent contradiction of previous Kremlin narrative lines that no negotiations had taken place between Russia and Ukraine on a mutual cessation of energy grid attacks by both sides. In fact, here is the original Tass report from late August that shows Peskov officially shooting this rumor down: You can see he very clearly states there were no confidential negotiations on this matter. But now, Shoigu has seemingly changed the record: How to reconcile this? Firstly, Shoigu doesn’t appear to specify when this proposed deal he’s referring to took place. Everyone’s assuming it’s recent but it sounds to me like he’s talking about an old deal long ago, perhaps even when Russia and Ukraine were first meeting in Istanbul. This is evidenced by the fact that he says “after a while”, which suggests a long amount of time elapsed before Kiev reneged on the deal, which points to a deal struck long ago. Secondly, he says the deal involved not striking each other’s civilian cargos in the Black Sea—we know for a fact this discussion is very old and there has been no recent action on this from either side that would have necessitated such a discussion about deals any time recently. These two factors appear to confidently age this deal Shoigu’s referring to by quite some time. For the record, shortly after Shoigu’s comments above, RIA posted an official update from the Kremlin: RIA_Kremlinpool
Peskov also released a new statement, where he plainly states “there were no clear agreements” on this: To play devil’s advocate, the Kremlin may have been genuinely concerned about a dementedly rogue Zelensky striking nuclear plants and creating a catastrophe for Russia. In such a case, it would be better to take a reputational hit and compromise with a madman for the sake of caution, while still slowly attritioning his army in the field. For instance, on that account we have this new report as an example of the lengths the West is willing to go to in their desperation: Sometimes it’s better to take a smaller loss for safety’s sake when you’re still on the path to overall victory in the war, but in general, it appears no such ‘negotiations’ were taking place any time recently by my reading of the facts, though I’m open to be proven wrong if further information comes to light. — On that note, a new statement by Ukrainian Energy Research institute director A. Kharchenko:
A little on European geopolitics. Reports claim Tusk has cancelled his German trip due to ongoing Nord Stream controversies:
More and more German politicians are starting to wake up to Zelensky’s lies. Seen on German N-TV recently was retired colonel Ralf Thiele, who accused Ukraine of waging information war against Germany:
Meanwhile, Scholz was asked point blank if he trusts Zelensky over recent Nord Stream revelations, to which he responded things must be clarified by Ukraine: Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht blasted Olaf Scholz:
That’s not to mention that Bild reports Ukraine is running out of parts for German equipment, which is now breaking down en masse:
— One other important video to see on the European front.
Draghi ended up concluding that in order to “catch up” to the US an undo the self-catastrophic self-administered damage that Europe sustained in cutting off Russian energy, the continent must now spend more than the post-WWII Marshall Plan in order to bring growth and industry back to normal levels. Needless to say, that’s not happening. As a side note, check how corrupt German regime media cheats the AfD, which has 17% but is drawn smaller than the SPD bar with 15% to create negative subliminal perceptions: — Many have seen by now that Lindsey Graham has again quite openly stated the true purpose of the United States’ involvement in the Ukrainian conflict: Did not find video Note in particular how chummily he backslaps Zelensky as if he’s a little boy on a school project. Would Graham dare deign to condescendingly slap any other leader of a major sovereign country like that? Macron, Scholz, etc.? It’s quite evocative of how the US views Ukraine: as nothing more than an abject pawn to be moved around on the board in the great game for those “trillions” he’s salivating over. — Polish newspaper reports that the mighty Ukrainian legions being trained in Poland never materialized:
A last few interesting weapons updates from the front: The biggest comes from the revelation that Russia is now finally actively using its heavy UCAV the Orion or Inokhodets drone, but in an actual strike role. Most know the Orion has been used for surveillance only, owing to its superior optics; but it’s usually held dozens of kilometers back and used to guide various types of artillery strikes, particularly at night. But now, there has been footage claiming to show the Orion using its Kornet-adapted missile against Ukrainian armor on the Kursk front, destroying several Ukrainian T-64 tanks: Did not find video
This obviously indicates two major things: That Russia has begun manufacturing these drones to scale, such that they no longer fear losing one by getting too close to the front. And/or 2: that Ukraine’s frontline SHORAD air defense is so attritioned as to allow these vulnerable heavy UCAVs to now operate without restriction along the frontline. If it was just that one errant video, I would not have even made the report. But there has been two separate direct reports from the front I’ve read this week attesting to this development. One simply was a confirmation from Russian military sources that the drones are now being used in Kursk. The second, was a confirmation from the AFU’s top radioelectronics expert, Serhiy Flash, that he has now “detected” multiple Orions operating on the front several times—which you can see for yourself here: Furthermore, what seems to support this “sudden” spike in Russian UCAV activity are several more instances of other UCAVs being spotted. First, another video surfaced purporting to show the Russian Forpost (licensed Israeli IAI Searcher) destroying more Ukrainian targets in Kursk:
Separate report:
This was followed by new footage showing a downed Iranian Mohajer-6—also in Kursk—with its guided aerial bombs attached:
Thus you can see the sudden preponderance of evidence indicating that Russia has suddenly activated the UCAVs en masse for the first time, specifically over Kursk region. This is likely due to Russia feeling much more comfortable using them over its own territory given that Ukrainian SHORAD AD has probably not been brought up in great amount that deep into Russian territory, and the little that was, has already been attritioned, as we’ve seen several videos of Ukrainian Buks and Patriots being destroyed on this front. — A newly released video apparently shows Russian T-72B3M tanks being fitted with Arena hardkill APS countermeasures, which may imply they will finally be rolling out some serial variants of this, though it’s hard to say for sure: Either way, it’s not expected to do much against FPVs given that the expert consensus is that APS is unlikely to be effective against slow-moving drones because it is specifically programmed to only engage fast-moving projectiles. If you changed the programming, then the APS would be engaging everything from falling twigs and leaves, to pebbles, to birds slowly flying past the tank. Without advanced artificial intelligence of some sort—which no APS currently has—it’s impossible to really differentiate between all these slow-moving objects. That’s not to mention the fact that APS in general was proven to be mostly ineffective as the “world-leading” Israeli Trophy system proved totally useless in Gaza, failing to show a single successful activation in dozens of videos of strikes on Israeli Merkava tanks equipped with the system. Your support is invaluable. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one. Alternatively, you can tip here: buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius |