I feel I have to start this one with a complaint.

I’m disappointed.

Bitterly.

The last two days, I haven’t caught any new, highly inspirational statement from Zelensky & Co KG GesmbH AG, or any of zombie idiots in ‘the West’. See: one of their usual, deeply meaningful messages, revealing incredible depths of insight, skills in governance, and endless wisdom.

Really: what a left-down!

How egoistic from those politicians: they only love themselves, and not me. Now I’m starved of reasons to be even more sarcastic about their incompetence… or shall I conclude that even stupid politicians are not as stupid as they used to be, just a week or so ago…?

Surely not! I could go on with stupid statements by Austrian politicians, just for example. However, the stupidity of the Austrian politics is as ‘new’ as its corruption, or as it is related to Ukraine. Thus, sorry: that’s not worth paying attention.

One way or the other, the cold fact is that I’ve got no other options but to move straight forward to air warfare.

***

AIR/MISSILE WARFARE

Hard on the heels of yet another Russian mass-strike utilising Shahed attack-UAVs - that, between others, hit a high-rise residential building in Kyiv, killing a 15-years-young girl - quite an interesting internal document from the Moscow-based company A23 LLC was released here. The A23 LLC is registered with the code ‘62.01’, indicating a company involved in software development. Ukrainians claim it is responsible for installing Comet R8 adaptive arrays on Shaheds.

Anyway… the document says that on average about 13% of Shaheds released by the Russsians by dozens into the Ukrainian airspace are actually hitting their targets.

I wouldn’t go as far as to characterise this with expressions like ‘only’, or ‘merely’: me thinks, not only that the Russians have at least as little clue about what are they actually hitting (if at all) as I do, but (and foremost): every single one that gets through and hits something in Ukraine is one too much.

(Should there be any doubts, ask the people hit by them…disclaimer for those in the rearmost rows: please mind that one can’t ask those killed by Shaheds, of course).

***

GROUND WARFARE

Kursk… the last two days, the (Ukrainian) 95th Assault continued mauling (what’s left of the Russian) 155th Naval Infantry. The 82nd Airborne lent a hand, and the Russians did their utmost to help them through presenting best possible targets by continuously driving their BTR-82s down that road from Liubimokva to Zelenyi Shlyakh in broad light. As any decent Pudding/Russia-fan in the social media can instantly confirm, this has no effects upon the Russians at all, of course: they’re ‘all volunteers’ and happy to get killed (or at least wounded, then quickly patched up in the local field hospital and sent into another assault so he can get killed)… and so, and just for example, the wife of one of the fallen troops from the 155th has posted the following photo in the social media, explaining everybody visible is meanwhile dead.

Bottom line, the last 24-36 hours, the troops of the 95th Airborne were foremost busy counting bodies and collecting arms and ammunition left behind by the Russians.

That said, there is no ‘western bulge’ in this area any more: the ZSU withdrew from Veseloe back to the international border.

***

Kupyansk-Svatove… several….erm… ‘readers’ of my last update in this regards were surprised. Some couldn’t find the segment of text explaining why I was so worried. Others couldn’t stop wondering how comes the Buddies in Kyiv (GenStab-U) didn’t report anything about that affair at all. And yet others couldn’t but conclude the obvious: I’m a Russian propagandist.

Full revelation: it’s all my own fault. You see: in the Year 2024, posting a written feature on an online blog, and then expecting anybody to actually read it is - is simply expressed - dumb. Plain stupid. After all, all the information is widely available in the social media, and if it’s not, then it didn’t happen. And then, and as everybody knows, and just like the Keystone Cops in Moscow, the Buddies are always, and without any exception, publishing statements about everything that happens on the Ukrainian side of the frontline.

Everything.

Especially all the bad news…

Never mind… the point is: the situation south-east of Kupyansk remains critical.

…I think so… and few of contacts think so, too… because, actually, nobody can say what’s going on. Only what and where is it not going on.

But, haha! I’m so cool I can see through and figure out what is that genious military mastermind Syrsky actually doing. He is - intentionally - losing entire battalions of ZSU units in the darkness and mud. His strategy is nothing else but brilliant: if neither him, nor his commanders can find their units any more, how are the Russians supposed to find them?

But, seriously now - at least for those 7,5 readers actually reading this…

On arrival in the Kruhlyakivka Sector, the 3rd Assault has found a chaos. Some positions were overrun by the Russians, others held out. But, nobody knew who, where, nor how, simply because this sector of the frontline was another one where the second greatest general of all the times faithfully pursued his second favourite hobby (after establishing ever additional brigades): that of patching up the frontline with battalions from different brigades.

For example, there was a sector nominally assigned to the 77th Airborne. Where nobody up and down the chain of command ZSU could say if that brigade was really deployed there, or was it just one of its battalions? But, the 77th was in control… Syrsky said so… and thus the 77th was in control…of…. hkhm… ‘a miscellany of battalions’. Until somebody ordered the 77th to withdraw… or part of it gave in to the Russian onslaught…

As of now, it’s unclear what exactly happened. But, why should that be important? That’s going to be ‘investigated’. Ukrainian style. Read: ‘after the war’…

Point is: faithful to its official designation, the 1st Guards Tanks Army came in masses of infantry. In such huge numbers that even well-versed ZSU veterans were astonished the enemies would be curious to deploy this many people on what is widely considered a ‘secondary sector’ of the frontline. Guess, the HQ VSRF Group Zapad is working and planning as well as Syrsky: if they can’t find the Ukrainians in few selected places, even more so in darkness and mud, they better send their troops everywhere…

Now, ‘surprisingly enough’, when one then puts a unit as well-organised, -commanded, and -trained as the 3rd Assault into such a chaos, then the result is inevitable: a bloody chaos. At least when it comes to the Russians. The only problem: by the time the 3rd arrived, the Russians were already across the first line of defence. Thus, the 3rd stopped them - with help from different of scattered companies and battalions it collected while arriving there - ‘only’ at the second line.

Some 200 killed Russian troops later, the 1st Guards Tanks Army changed its tactics, and ever since it’s assaulting the flanks of that second line….

That was… lets say ‘one side’ of the Pishchane Bulge. If you think it’s very different ‘on the other side’. It’s not. On that… ‘other side’… Syrsky was even more successful in regards of creating a chaos through patching up the frontline with disparate battalions. So much so, there it’s not only the 3rd Assault, but the 92nd Assault having its hands full still re-establishing the frontline…

Hope is slim, but one can never know: perhaps Syrsky, or one or another of his buddies now comes to the idea that this is a total of two units likely to buy enough time for them to sort out the mess they’ve created and construct a new defence line behind the 3rd and 92nd Assault…?

Bottom line: Syrsky should, but is never going to, consider himself both happy and lucky. Because a) his troops (not him) have trounced the peace-time VSRF (back in 2022, but also ever since), b) Pudding helped them convert the Russian armed forces into a mob of poorly-commanded and chaotically-led kamikaze-infantry, and c) there are ‘still’ ZSU units working far better both he and the Keystone Cops in Moscow can imagine.

Foremost: ‘kamikaze’ or not, but ‘infantry’ - even when officially organised into a mob still designated the ‘1st Guards TANKS Army’ - is ‘rather incompatible’ with ‘mud’. Read: once again, the Russians can’t move fast enough to exploit any kind of success. At least not as long as there are still ZSU units around, capable of reacting as quickly as the 3rd and the 92nd did.

***

Pokrovsk… did you know, dearest and most esteemed reader, that if one combines all the territory of Ukraine seized by Russia since October 2023, that’s only some 0,25% of the grand total?

With other words: all the Russian ‘success’ is, actually, ‘not worth mention’.

That is something like ‘joint conclusion’ of dozens of most prominent Ukrainian- and ‘Western’ military Experten active in the social media of these days.

Who cares if Russia thus might not have advanced very much, and captured one or another village, even a town or two? As long as one hasn’t lived there: nobody. Even less important is that this means that Russia remains in possession of strategic initiative. Indeed, this is so irrelevant, nobody is even talking about it.

…it’s unimportant even when something happens like it seems to have happened to the 15th NG Kara-Dag Brigade in Selydove, the last few days. Apparently, in the middle of trouncing the XYth Russian assault, the brigade run out ammunition.

The reason is not yet known. Could be the Russian UMPKs known to have hit Pokrovsk on 18 October, or some of their artillery- and/or rocket strikes ‘didn’t’ hit one or another ammo train or depot behind the frontline? Or ‘one or more’ trucks distributing beans, bullets, and gas to the troops in the first line of defence?

Of course not. That’s impossible alone because the Ukrainian air force didn’t report any such strikes in days…. and, because nothing of that kind was reported in the social media, and there are no photos nor videos. If at all, there are only photos and videos like the two above: the 15th NG is killing Russians in scores and everything is fine.

Therefore, conclusion is on hand: the Russians aren’t shelling and rocketing Pokrovsk, Rodynske and Myrnohrad for days, without interruption… or if they do, then they’re striking civilian objects, only… so said the Buddies in Kyiv…

And all of this is irrelevant. What is relevant (though ‘just a bit’) is by the time the 15th NG was receiving ammunition again, the Russians were in control over half of Selydove.

Obviously, all of that is also entirely unrelated to the issue of the Russians retaining the strategic initiative. Because, you see, when the enemy is constantly assaulting, then every minor mistake can have terrible consequences. Shit happens. All the time, every day. It’s only bad when it happens at the wrong place in time and space…

***

Could go on with descriptions of similar adventures by the 79th Airborne - in that God-forgotten corner of the frontline, far away, there in south-east… so far away, the Buddies are regularly forgetting to send ammo, supplies, and reinforcements there.

But, it’s already afternoon, and I’ve got a few things to do by the end of the day. Thus, here just another still from a video showing a Javelin-strike. This time by the 79th Airborne, on approaches to Uspenivka…

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