Okay, a bit of clarification in this ...
"This is more of a general update on things related to the war and the ongoing offensive.
Fair warning, there will be a bit of jumping about
Ship
Ivan Khurs has an identity.
We now believe that the attacked ship was not Ivan Khurs at all.
It was in the Black Sea the entire time, and as such could not have gone through the Bosporus.
We instead believe now that it was the sister ship Yuri Ivanov that snuck in using the transponder code of Ivan Khurs to not be stopped by the per usual bribed Turks (who obviously knew that it could not be Ivan Khurs).
It was hit in the rear by a naval drone, and with 500kg of amatol going off the ship is at least not in a good shape.
There is now a video sequence of the drone exploding upon contact.
Our current guesstimate (no sat view) is that the ship is either being towed at 0.8 knots by a high sea tug that arrived on site a few hours later (0.8 knots is the speed of travel by the tug), or it outright sank.
The Russian video is a similar looking mine laying ship that uses the same hull and general configuration, it has a crane in the rear which Ivan Khurs does not have.
Bilhorod II
As the Free Russia soldiers left Bilhorod Russia started to pull back the 93rd battalion again, so the Free Russian's rapidly ran across the border and occupied the Glotove post office and blew up some stuff forcing the Russians to turn back again.
I bet Ukraine will perform several more border crossings in the weeks to come to try to pull out more Russian troops.
Luhansk
The missile attacks on military targets in Luhansk City continues at a steady pace.
This is primarily an attempt to cut the Russian supply routes into Donbas
Moscow MOD
After having suffered from two fires in as many days there are reports that the Russians are not using large parts of it, probably due mostly to smoke damage.
It was noticed that the Pantzir Air Defence Truck that had been lifted up on top of the roof is gone, and that there is a truck sized hole in the roof.
It is speculated that the roof caved in from the 36 ton air defence system, and that this caused at least one of the fires.
I would not like to deal with that, imagine how unstable things would be if a missile laded truck has crashed through several floors...
Bakhmut
After a few days of lull Ukraine has started to push against the northern and southern flanks and taken ground again.
It is believed that this is an attempt to lock down the Russian army units located there, and if possible take them out.
Question here is more what Wagner is truly doing?
Are they really pulling out?
Where will they go?
Will they really go and rest inside Russia?
Will they go to another section of the frontline?
Will they go for Moscow?
Will they go to Africa and increase my spectacular headache?
Feck knows...
Artillery
A number to keep track of is the destruction of Russian artillery systems.
During the entire war this number has been below 10 per day, with a few days of up towards 20.
Now for the last few weeks every single day has been above 20 with the peeks at 40 per day.
This means that every 40 days Russia loses about 1000 systems in direct enemy fire, and it is believed that Russia loses about 20 each day as they explode due to excessive wear and tear.
These systems are totally irreplaceable for Russia, in the last decade Russia has built a total of 10 new artillery systems....
In other words, there is just nothing left to replace them with, and every piece that Ukraine takes out is a new nail in the coffin of Russia.
The reason is that the Russian army both in practice and doctrinally are totally reliant on artillery, and with that gone Russia is unable to perform offensive operations, and soon at a level where they can no longer defend at all.
Ukraine on the other hand is growing in artilery strength each day, especially in high precision counter-battery systems.
Donetsk City
During the day several videos was released in Russian channels of military installations all over Donetsk City.
As one place was done being massaged the Ukrainians just moved on to the next target.
The artillery fire started yesterday and has been continuously ongoing since then with roughly one shell hitting every 5 seconds.
I am not saying that this is incredibly important, but I would like to remind that from Klichi'ivka on the southern Ukrainian offensive at Bakhmut there is a road leading directly to behind Donetsk City, and that the same is true from Vuhledar.
I am also sort of hinting that Avdi'ivka is a surburb of Donetsk City, and that this is from where all those massage toys are being sent towards the Russian targets.
Not that I am saying anything really here...
Southern Front
Ukraine has performed numerous missile strikes in the last few days against Melitopol, Berdyansk and Mariupol (and a few Bridges near the coast).
These have hit mainly large warehouses that Russia stores thing in, and a few large command posts.
Close to the front there has been an uptick in artillery and drone strike missions.
Crimea
During the night Ukraine launched 16 drones against Dzhankoi, it is both an air field and the central hub point of the Russian logistics through Crimea.
Their Air Defence downed 7 of them and 9 hit all sorts of interesting things.
It is here good to note that Ukraine is mass producing these dirt cheap drones, so they are forcing Russia to use extremely expensive AD missiles to take out basically hobby kits...
9 hits is though extremely good result, and the logistics hub is looking a tad forlorn afterwards.
Russia bombs Russia
During the last 48 hours Russia has accidentally dropped no less than 3 different 500kg glide bombs inside Russia, there may be more but these we know about.
What is hysterical is both the dropping, and that they rarely explode upon impact.
Either the Russian pilots are just dropping them to later claim that they attacked Ukraine with them, or there is something extremely wrong with the bomb fastening hardpoint and that breaks all the time.
And the bombs are armed all the time in the air so there is definitely something wrong with those.
Sudan et al
The negotiated seize fire is making a difference, but enforcing it is a true nightmare as per usual in Africa.
On a daily basis several firefights break out that has to be put out.
But hey, 100 dead a day is normally a slow day there.
I have redacted the next bit but, basically it descibed how he used Prigozhin's fondness for mines to locate and whack Wagner in Sudan from the air.
Equipment Shortage
This is a private gripe.
We are short on gear, especially CV90s.
Having sent 200 to Ukraine and 100 and counting to Sudan we are depressingly low on them.
Thankfully Block 4s are starting to roll off the production line next week at the speed of 2 per week.
This is just a stopgap that we borrowed from an order to [redacted] country, and in October the Block5s will start to roll of the lines at a pace of 4 a week.
The Block 5s are true armour porn with improved armour, improved Bofors 40mm rifle, integrated missiles (can carry both AD and antitank missiles), built in recon drone, GHOST system, active protection, the works...
And 1 in 4 is the 120mm light tank version, the Block 5 CV90-120...
I want to galumph around in one...
Airplanes
Ukraine getting F-16a was a given, but they are also getting the JAS-39 Gripen C/D version.
Yesterday it became official that we will train 20 pilot's at a time on them, but in our usual fashion we started months ago.
This was just the confirmation part before sending the first batch home with their new planes (10 of them), and then there will be 10 more every 4 months until they have all 50 we are giving away, with 12 of them being repossessed from Hungary due to lack of payment... they owe us 5 years of leasing fee's at this time.
At least the planes are replaced at the same pace by factory new Super Gripen's...
These will be perfect for Ukraine since they Gripen can use crappier tarmac compared to the F-16s."
No wonder he doesn't have time to do our work!
