Сводки с фронта с Русланом Левиевым

August 29, our final summer report. Oh, how time flies. Let’s take stock of the summer season. At the start of the year, many of us had some hope that, even if not officially, the war could at least de facto freeze along the front line. I remember that in the second half of 2024, my colleagues and I expected recruitment into the Russian army to collapse in 2025, because by then there would be fewer people who didn’t understand what signing a military contract actually entailed. And the pool of debtors, people behind on child support, alcoholics, and so on isn’t infinite. Last year showed us just how wrong we were. Then, at the start of this year, Russian army recruitment really did take a serious hit. Until mid-July, headlines kept saying that the previous month had been the worst yet for the Russian army in terms of its rate of advance. You can go back to my April and May reports and remember how I said we would be watching the situation in May and June very closely. If May and June were just as quiet in terms of frontline developments, that would mean the Russian army really was having serious problems at the front. And that’s exactly how the first half of the summer played out. What’s more, the Ukrainian army was slowly advancing in Dnipropetrovsk Region, on the Oleksandrivka direction. But from mid-July, the Russian army began putting more pressure on Ukrainian positions in Donetsk Region, and combat started intensifying again. The timeline matters a lot here. To carry out a successful infiltration and get into the rear, you need foliage on the trees to hide you from drones. By around the end of October, that foliage will be gone. So the most favorable window for offensive action is fairly short. That’s why in previous years the Russian army tried to establish its main axis of attack at the very start of this window, in May or June, achieve some sort of breakthrough, and use the rest of the period to develop and consolidate it. Nobody shifts a timeline like this without a serious reason. My assumption is that the sharp drop in Russian army recruitment at the start of the year caused the schedule to shift. Had Russian generals been a little smarter, they could have solved the problem differently: optimize the front line, abandon completely pointless sectors, and redirect the resources they freed up to the main breakthrough sector. In the second quarter of this year, if regional budget data are to be believed, recruitment stabilized and Russia went back to taking in 30,000 people a month. That sharply contradicts federal budget data, according to which the Russian army recruited 20,000 people a month throughout the entire first half of the year. But we attribute these discrepancies to accounting practices and statistical manipulation by the authorities. We think so for two reasons. First, there was exactly the same discrepancy with federal data last year, and the first half of 2025 likewise appeared to have been disastrous. But according to federal data, recruitment in the second half of 2025 was exceptionally high and evened things out. In the end, as we know in part from public statements by Ukrainian military intelligence, Russia actually exceeded its annual recruitment target last year. The second reason we currently put more faith in the regional data is the clear intensification of frontline action in the second half of this summer. That couldn’t happen if recruitment had been failing for six straight months. To sum up, I believe the recruitment rate directly affects the scale of hostilities, and the disastrous January 2026 shifted the Russian army’s timetable of what it could actually do. If recruitment does eventually collapse once and for all, and Russia spends many months recruiting no more than 20,000 people a month, that could lead to a de facto, but not de jure, halt to hostilities along the front line. I mean that the front line itself would go quiet without any peace agreements being signed. That wouldn’t necessarily mean the war itself had stopped. In mid-July, I started actively using the term “war of cities”, saying that the war was shifting from a frontline, positional form to a long-range, aerial one. Once both sides realize they can no longer achieve anything major at the front, they switch to strikes against the rear. At CIT, we debated how acceptable that would be to Putin, and whether he would be comfortable with a situation where the front was at a complete standstill, but “at least” more and more missile strikes were being carried out against Ukraine. We had no consensus on this. Personally, I think Putin would be perfectly comfortable with that situation. Others think he wouldn’t, and that he would probably launch a second wave of mobilization to get frontline action moving again. Well, we’ll see. But I should note that Russia is currently recruiting contract soldiers at a steady rate of 30,000 a month, which is why we’re now seeing the front heat up again. Ukrainian attacks on the Oleksandrivka direction in Dnipropetrovsk Region have continued throughout the summer. On the one hand, they have achieved a certain amount of success and liberated part of their own territory. On the other hand, they failed to achieve the operation’s objective: cutting the Velyka Novosilka–Hulyaipole highway. Had they managed that, the position of Russian forces on the Hulyaipole direction in Zaporizhzhia Region would be noticeably worse. Still, the success of the Ukrainian Armed Forces did hurt the Russian army politically and in terms of messaging. As soon as reports of AFU successes appeared and DeepState began recoloring its maps, the Russian side started publishing batches of flag-planting videos from settlements it claimed to have captured, trying to disprove the AFU’s success. And here’s the important part. This week, the Russian side published videos of its drones striking Ukrainian artillery positions near Dobropasove in Dnipropetrovsk Region and Nove Pole in Zaporizhzhia Region. Artillery positions aren’t placed on the front line because of that same drone threat. They’re usually positioned about 15 km from the line of contact. So if there are Ukrainian artillery positions in Dobropasove and Nove Pole, that contradicts Russian claims about its advances in this sector. In other words, the Russian army disproved its own claims with its own videos. By the end of the summer, Ukrainian success had become visible on the Rubtsi direction, next to the Lyman direction. Over the past few months, Ukrainian units managed to retake positions around Ridkodub, Katerynivka, and Nove. At the same time, they are attacking from Stavky toward the village of Kolodiazi. In doing so, the AFU is trying to cut off the entire “Shandryholove salient” hanging over the Lyman direction. And although this salient is somewhat off to the side of the most important sector, the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk direction, it plays a significant role in the battles for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Clearing the Shandryholove salient would greatly improve the Ukrainian position on the Lyman direction. It would make it easier for the AFU to rotate troops and bring supplies into the sector. Ukrainian drone operators would also be able to position themselves more safely in the forests north of the Siverskyi Donets River and strike Russian troops advancing toward Sloviansk from there. Although Ukrainian forces are close to completely cutting off the Shandryholove salient, I still don’t expect any encirclements or pockets. Visually, on a map, it will most likely look like a complete encirclement. But this is the war of 2026. In the modern Russia–Ukraine war, the front line is very thinly manned. That allows soldiers on both sides to sort of “seep” through each other’s positions. And that is why full-scale encirclements and pockets are effectively impossible as well. On the Ukrainian side, the front line north of the Siverskyi Donets River is the responsibility of the AFU’s 3rd Army Corps, headed by Andrii Biletskyi, the founder and first leader of Azov. In fact, the 3rd Corps itself was formed on the basis of the 3rd Assault Brigade Azov. Along with the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine, these two formations are considered among the most professional in the Defense Forces of Ukraine, with a strong staff culture. Well-organized operations and combined-arms combat can produce success even with limited resources. And these are the two corps that were somehow “updated” this week. What exactly that means remains unclear, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed that the positions held by these two updated formations would be reinforced. There will probably be some changes in brigade assignments, with brigades being transferred from one corps to another. It looks like the Ukrainian side has finally paid attention to the most critical sector. Until now, all the main activity and resources had been concentrated on the Oleksandrivka direction in Dnipropetrovsk Region. Now let’s look at the summer’s events from the Russian side’s perspective. After a long lull that lasted for half the summer, the Russian army managed to achieve a local tactical breakthrough in July on the Dobropillia direction in Donetsk Region. The Russian army is trying to repeat last year’s scenario by driving a wedge between two cities: Dobropillia and Druzhkivka. Last year, it was the Vozdvyzhenka breakthrough between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. Russian assault troopers are now periodically infiltrating the city of Dobropillia, as well as the neighboring settlement of Hannivka. Russian forces are also fighting near Kucheriv Yar, Novomykolaivka, and Torske. Overall, I would say that the integrity of Ukrainian defenses in this section of the front has been breached. This section of the front is the responsibility of one of those “updated corps,” namely the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine. Like the Rubtsi direction, the Dobropillia direction is also important in the context of the battles for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, because it forms the southern flank of the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk direction. As for the part of the Dobropillia breakthrough that turned toward the city of Dobropillia itself, its objective is to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk Region. On the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk direction itself, all attention is now focused on Mykolaivka, which neighbors Sloviansk. Local Telegram channels report almost every day that new groups of Russian assault troopers have infiltrated the city. On other streams recently, I said that Russian propaganda would very likely exploit the current state of affairs on the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk section of the front. We can expect that sometime in mid-September, they’ll show a video of a Russian assault trooper waving a flag somewhere on the eastern outskirts of Sloviansk. Propaganda will declare it a sign that the battle has begun for the last major urban agglomeration in Donetsk Region. Given the realities of modern warfare, you could already send an assault trooper there on a one-way mission just to wave a flag. For the Kremlin, that would be an answer to the pro-war Z community: look, we’re almost at the finish line, there’s hardly anything left, just hang on a little longer, one last push. And then, just a few days ago, a Russian MoD report came out in which Russia’s chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said that the Russian army was only 4 km from Sloviansk. He also said Russian units were already fighting on the grounds of Kramatorsk Airport, which is 3 km from the city itself. In reality, as we gradually move into autumn and the leaves are gone by late fall, combat will slow down accordingly. I’m confident that, in the best-case scenario for the Kremlin, the Russian army will be able to extend the gray zone as far as Sloviansk while still fighting to establish a foothold in Mykolaivka. The battles for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are a matter for next year. And yes, I agree with Kyrylo Budanov, the former head of Ukrainian military intelligence and now head of Ukraine’s presidential office, who said recently that the war would continue throughout the winter and into next year. I don’t see any signs of negotiations. And all these comments from Western, especially American, officials are nothing more than yet another round of blah-blah-blah that will lead nowhere. AFU Weaponry Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke about the current state of Ukraine’s air defense. He said Ukraine had received a batch of PAC-3 interceptor missiles for the Patriot system from an undisclosed source. As a result, by the middle of the week we once again started seeing Ukraine intercept Russian ballistic missiles, something we hadn’t seen for quite some time. Since the Ukrainian Air Force recently stopped publishing data on how many ballistic missiles Russia launched in total on any given day, we don’t know what percentage is currently being intercepted. I strongly suspect this was another package under the PURL initiative. We saw exactly the same situation in July: for almost two weeks, no ballistic missiles were intercepted at all. Then interceptions resumed, but only on a limited scale, and by the beginning of August they had stopped again. Zelenskyy also said at the time that Ukraine was in fact continuing to receive a limited number of Patriot missiles every month, which had been purchased some time ago. He also said the U.K. had agreed to declassify and transfer data on the SCALP missile to Ukraine so it could set up its own local missile assembly line. The wording allows for two interpretations. On the one hand, it sounds as though this means local production of SCALP missiles in Ukraine. On the other hand, it could mean assembling Ukrainian missiles of some kind that would use components from the SCALP missile. The second interpretation is supported by the fact that the U.S. has not authorized the transfer of the rights to manufacture these missiles. French SCALP missiles, like their British counterparts, Storm Shadow, contain American navigation components. So without U.S. permission, you can’t simply transfer the right to manufacture them to another country. France has already given its approval. Incidentally, there may be a third option: local Ukrainian assembly of SCALP missiles after all, but without the American components, which would be replaced with other equivalents. The main question, of course, is the scale of production. But since we don’t even know what the final version of the missile would be, we certainly don’t know anything about the scale of production either. Zelenskyy also said the Italian government had prepared a new military aid package for Ukraine that includes air-defense components, Aster 30 interceptor missiles for the SAMP/T air-defense system, and seven long-range radars. As far as I know, the SAMP/T systems Ukraine currently has are unable to intercept Russian ballistic missiles precisely because of their weak radars. Apparently, Ukraine is supposed to receive new radars next year — perhaps these are the ones mentioned in the news about Italy — as well as upgraded SAMP/T-NG systems. And do you know who became an adviser to Italy’s defense minister? Former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov. I’m straying a little outside my lane here, but given the relationship between Zelenskyy and Fedorov, I think this is a risky move for Fedorov. It makes it easier to open a criminal case against him, for example for disclosing state secrets. After all, military matters, the situation at the front, and so on all fall under state secrets. And there are strict procedures for declassifying such information, even when you need to share something with friends and your closest partners. If you don’t follow the procedure, you can end up facing a criminal case. My point is that if Volodymyr Zelenskyy ever wants to put pressure on Mykhailo Fedorov, this route to a criminal case is more reliable and less obviously political. If we imagine some corruption case against Fedorov, it would immediately be obvious that the case was political. But if it were a criminal case over a breach involving state secrets, the political motive would no longer be quite so obvious. In a sense, it turned into a kind of exchange: you give us air defense, we give you Fedorov. So, some interesting things are happening around the Defense Forces of Ukraine, both with these updated corps and with the political developments surrounding Ukraine’s top leadership. Well, see you in the fall?