Staggering To Defeat: Endgame For Putin's Assault On Ukraine
The beginning of the end of the Ukraine War is finally in sight: Ukraine's military reboot, deep strike campaign, and battlefield networks are too efficient for Moscow's meat tactics to beat.
An end to the Ukraine War isn’t coming in a matter of weeks, but months - as few as ten to twelve, is very possible. The Muscovite economy is stuttering, and the fighting on the ground is still going quite poorly in most areas.
No empire can sustain a war like this forever. Especially not when the target has no choice but to relentlessly innovate.
Over the past year, the Ukrainians have flipped the script on the orcs again, preserving their own people and combat power at almost any cost while relying on drones to do as much of the fighting as possible. Estimated fatality rates are now half of where they stood less than a year ago. No longer are media outlets in Ukraine and abroad publishing a steady stream of articles about exhausted Ukrainian soldiers unable to take leave.
It’s marvelous when long-term plans start coming together. For two years now I’ve been insisting that Ukraine actually does have a strategy to win the war despite the 2023 counteroffensive not going as hoped. Ukrainian sources are now teasing that this may indeed be the case.
Ukraine’s last major counteroffensive campaign in the late summer of 2024 seized the strategic initiative from the orcs, forcing them to defend their home turf in Kursk instead of reinforcing the grind in Donbas. This bought precious time for Ukraine’s reformed forces to mature, now finally backed by the full spectrum of combined arms kit, from AWACS and multirole jets down to modern armor and artillery. Ukraine also slowly but surely forced the USA to reveal it’s true hand, prompting Europe to band together out of necessity.
In truth, Ukraine has already won the war for its survival in most respects. If the war ended right now with Ukraine’s full integration into NATO and the EU, but the price was the permanent surrender of everything Putin has managed to steal since 2014, I would even call this a victory and expect most Ukrainians would too. This despite my intense suspicion of institutions that place too much faith in cheap promises and scraps of paper instead of automatic commitments to kinetic support.
Putin, however, will not acknowledge his defeat until his generals finally report that they can no longer send reinforcements out to the front because Ukrainian troops have restored the original international border in Donbas or secured a permanent foothold in Crimea. Only once trends clearly demonstrate that Putin is losing ground in Ukraine and can’t restore the front line will he be forced to retreat under an invented pretext, the way he did in Kherson in 2022.
How this level of military triumph can be accomplished at the least cost in lives is the only question that truly remains. Rapidly increasing support for Ukraine from Europe as well as Ukraine’s own production are essential. However, one of the biggest unknowns remains how long Putin’s economy can cope with the strain it’s under. Pressures have been rising for some time, Moscow forcing companies to take on bad debts which will come due eventually, and being down a quarter of your fuel refining capacity with more going offline every few days and worse hits coming does not bode well.
Putin may not realize this yet, but ending the war now and proclaiming victory is probably the least risky option. The Ukrainians are actively burning the candle of his war effort at both ends. Taking out the cornerstone of the Muscovite economy is a hit to already badly out-of-balance budgets, and any further success on Ukraine’s part will slow down fuel shipments to the front, other supply shortages mounting in their wake.
The Ukrainians carving up nearly every orc attack at the front with minimal losses requires Moscow’s economy to work that much harder to keep up with the burn rate. Something has got to give, and will sooner or later.
Welcome to the metabolic crisis, orcs! It’s not gonna end until you all go home for good. Everything can and will get so much worse - yet it will never be The End you all constantly threaten the world with. The nukes will never fly because Putin’s entourage fears apocalypse as much as Trump and Biden flacks. Only two options remain for the Muscovite empire: enduring the pain of retreat now, or succumbing to even more down the line.
Overview of the Fronts: Week 37
A driving strategic question given the balance of power is whether Ukraine should take the gamble of unleashing a series of major, intensive counteroffensive operations this year or wait for even more drone and robotic support to arrive in 2026. My belief remains yes, because the risk of Putin receiving a dramatic increase in open Chinese support by 2026 is grave. But I definitely don’t have all the information needed to make an effective determination, and more importantly, it’s not my country or life at stake.
Still, from a policy perspective, losing ten thousand lives every year for two or three or even more to come is worse than losing ten thousand over the next three months if that sacrifice brings an end to the thing. A short-term quadrupling of the casualty rate in exchange for a shot at dropping to near zero not long after is a bitter choice to have to make. But if the alternative is martial law and mobilization forever, I suspect that most Ukrainians now in uniform would try their luck. At least sixty thousand have already been lost, but even at the much-reduced rate of roughly ten thousand fatalities a year, or even five, fighting like this until 2028 leads to the loss of just as many Ukrainians with no real guarantee that Moscow won’t get enough Chinese support to negate the sacrifice.
Further, by 2026 the world will be entering a period where everything that happens in Europe will have a direct bearing on Chinese plans in the Pacific. The Chinese military’s official be-ready date for a move on Taiwan is reported to be 2027, so certain levels of planning will be locked in well before. Putin now has this much leverage over Xi: once his military is visibly crippled after a last-gasp push in Donbas, he can then blackmail his fair-weather partner into upping the provision of major military gear lest the Muscovite empire finally collapse.
It might wind up being North Korean kit, but enough of it can do much to rapidly regenerate Moscow’s forces, with or without a ceasefire. Beijing is unlikely to have much interest in holding on to old generation ground gear not useful in a fight to isolate Taiwan. It might be junk compared to anything Ukraine can build or obtain but again, quantity has a quality of it’s own. A Chinese tank from 1975 might sound like a joke, but the Leopard 1s now doing fine service in Ukraine are older, and unless you happen to have the right weapon or support facing a tank from the First World War isn’t a pleasant prospect.
Still, so far as the war Putin unleashed goes, from 2026 onward he’ll be in the position Ukraine once was: only able to continue it with whatever support allies see fit to provide. That’s why this is now the endgame: if the Ukraine War continues past 2026, the character of the conflict will have changed.
Moscow has been hoarding the last reserves of old gear and the few hundreds of new pieces the orcs can produce each year, sacrificing barely trained mobilized soldiers to drain Ukrainian resources as much as possible, preventing a counteroffensive from gaining steam. The Ukrainians, thanks to ongoing adaptation, have evaded the worst of the intended consequences of this play and partially regenerated their forces instead of struggling to hold a fixed line. That gives Ukraine the strategic initiative, though it might not look that way on the ground just yet.
Fortunately, the forces Putin is mustering for what should be the last major push in Donbas are not newly raised formations, but his already limited strategic and operational reserves. Moscow is weakening the Sumy, Kherson, and Kharkiv fronts, once more narrowing the scope of active conflict and using the Dnipro and North Koreans to limit Ukraine’s ability to get around Moscow’s strategic flanks.
He’s going to push as hard as he can as long as possible, trading increasing vulnerability beyond Donbas for what should prove to be dwindling progress towards Ukraine’s urban bastion. The risk of a major Ukrainian effort is growing every day that autumn nears, because it is probably going to be easier to plan operations around changes in the weather than to fight in summer, when drones face fewer natural impediments. Ground drones are apt to prove a huge benefit to light forces moving in bad weather, allowing Ukrainian assault teams to infiltrate orc positions in storms then strike them from multiple angles when drones can fly again. Being able to remotely deliver supplies to caches should prove extremely useful.
So far, draining Ukrainian resources by forcing them to fight necessary battles before a counteroffensive can be launched has kept the orcs in the war as much as North Korean or Iranian aid. Moscow’s Kharkiv incursion in 2024 was intended to pull Ukrainian troops away from Donbas and enable the conquest of Pokrovsk, but backfired when Ukraine stopped the offensive just beyond the border then later pushed into Kursk.
The essential pattern was already taking shape in early 2023, when the orcs sent Wagner to take Bakhmut at any cost. If Ukraine hadn’t sacrificed so much there then, perhaps the 2023 counteroffensive might have gone a little bit better, but it still wouldn’t have been the war-ending triumph that Ukrainians and allies hoped for. And in the bargain, Kostyantynivka would likely be under occupation today, giving the orcs the required beachhead to carry on the assault to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
I - and nearly every other observer - was wrong in the summer of 2023 to believe that Putin’s forces could still be, after mobilization had been underway for over half a year, depleted enough that they’d collapse entirely if Ukrainian forces reached the Azov Coast. The hope was real and not totally unjustified, but the chances of a counteroffensive launched against an area Moscow was working hard to fortify dimmed as allies dithered and delayed on sending the necessary arms. Most sober analysts saw what was happening and had their concerns - unlike the names most often cited by journalists, they did not predict a near-instant Ukrainian liberation of Crimea or Donbas even in the best case scenario, only a successful push to the rail corridor that passes through the Azov uplands.
That seemed like it could have been enough of a victory to initiate a chain reaction in Putin’s battered army, but follow-on offensives into 2024 would still have been necessary to defeat diehard ruscist formations under all but the most hopeful scenarios. Liberating all of Donbas and Crimea by force instead of negotiations would have taken longer and been a heavier lift still. Putin would have spent the next two years fighting in Donbas and holding out in Crimea.
Wagner’s revolt might have been difficult to quell, but clearly it lacked the necessary will to prevail. In retrospect, it does almost look like those who thought Wagner’s revolt an FSB operation gone wrong were onto something. It unfolded almost like a staged coup that some gung-ho Wagner participants mistook to be the real thing, when the actual plan was only to give Putin an excuse to simultaneously crack down on dissenters while quietly escalating the war to satisfy hardline demands.
What the orcs took from 2023 was that forcing Ukraine to fight for places it can’t afford to give up is the way to win the war of attrition and outlast Western interest, which very nearly happened. Most of the people who spent time writing and talking about the Ukraine War disappeared long ago.
The Ukrainians were ready for this, or at least moved quickly enough to adapt, and have restructured the fight on the ground to turn the tables on the enemy. Investments made over the past year and a half are generating important results. Overall, this is now a broadly even fight. If the Ukrainians make the right moves with the necessary density of force, they can crumble the orc front in the east.
At the highest level, Ukraine’s fight on the front for some time now has been all about sucking Moscow into as many grinding and ultimately futile fights as possible, turning the enemy’s own strategy against them. Every corps will be expected to begin maneuvering in its assigned sector to draw out enemy reserves so they can be pounded by strike drones. Moscow’s offensives long ago mostly degenerated into vain flailing, while many of Ukraine’s corps have started throwing solid punches in reply. Expect these to intensify going forward.
That’s what a military endgame looks like. The Ukraine War cannot and will not last forever. Ukraine has to continue dialing up the pressure in every domain until the Muscovite assemblage collapses under its own weight. It’s happening, one frontline position at a time. The intervening waves of the tsunami since the first crashed ashore in 2022 have not been as devastating as predicted. That’s all the more reason to expect the most devastating of all to be rushing up behind.
Northern Theater
Sumy
The Ukrainians pushed the orcs back towards the border a bit more in Sumy, further cementing the failure of Moscow’s push here. That Zelensky is calling it beaten suggests the Ukrainians have spotted most of the reserves required to continue the advance at scale moving elsewhere.
Several advance orc battalions have been effectively trapped in forward positions, their logistics almost or even totally cut by Ukrainian drones. The fighting here continues to be characterized by the Ukrainians maintaining a thin screen of infantry to limit the potential for infiltration and only occasionally moving to secure an infested area once the enemy is well pounded.
I don’t expect the Ukrainians to mount a major push inside Kursk again, however. Seizing a border village or terrain feature, sure. But the Northern Front looks likely to go largely quiet again as Ukraine observes a tacit unilateral halt on holding major chunks of Muscovite territory. No longer looks right given Ukraine’s correct diplomatic posture as Europe’s primary shield.
Kharkiv
Fighting will probably never fully stop in the Kharkiv area, as the orcs want to make sure the Ukrainians don’t sneak into Belgorod. Such a move is more likely to happen here than in Kursk now, but the potential for North Korean reinforcements to rapidly stiffen the orc lines makes it less attractive than other places for a counteroffensive, and again, there’s the diplomatic side to consider.
Though going into Kursk was the right call, it did put the Ukrainians in a difficult diplomatic and moral position. Early this year, the balance of costs shifted. As much as I’d dearly love to see my nieces in Rostov-on-Don liberated, it’s going to have to be citizens of the empire who take matters into their own hands. So it has ever been in the nightmare Moscow built.
The Ukrainians are moreover holding enemy teams on Ukrainian territory in place, going after their logistics to leave them unable to maintain any level of serious advance. Moscow’s incursion over the border on the eastern edge of Kharkiv has turned into a trap for the orcs dispatched to maintain the probe.
Eastern Theater
Kupiansk
The past week finally shed some light on the root of Ukraine’s recent troubles north of Kupiansk, where counterattacks have limited further Muscovite advances but still see orc troops repeatedly creeping into the suburbs before being located and destroyed. Sometimes they wave a flag first to generate positive headlines back home, about like Team Trump blowing up alleged drug running boats that for anyone knows could be some poor fisherman from a totally different place.
Use of civilian clothing to blend with the local population is here, and in a few other locations, becoming more frequent. Always a nasty tactic, that, because you wind up getting drone shots of apparent civilians being shot when soldiers are actually fending off infiltrators. And accidents are always a risk.
But what’s really helped the orcs recently is that the area hosts a series of pipes just large enough for a person to creep through. Contrary to some early media reports, the problem pipes don’t lead all the way to Kupiansk, though a branch does appear to cut around the western outskirts towards essential logistics routes.
I’ve also seen at least one map suggesting the pipes run straight from Lyman Pershyi across the Oskil, but if that’s the case OpenTopoMap doesn’t show it. Another pipeline meant for gas also enters Kupiansk by crossing the river, but as its inlets are under Ukrainian control it doesn’t look to be the main issue. They blew it up just to be safe, though.
The troublesome pipeline seems to begin outside the village of Zapadne, on the west bank of the Oskil, with outlets between the hamlets of Radkivka and Holubivka, near a substantial forest tract. What must have been happening for some time is orcs boating across the Oskil and taking refuge in the forest near the entrance, then creeping to the southwest as far as they can go inside the pipes. Emerging into another forest, infiltration teams would be able to rest before moving on targets in the Kupiansk suburbs.
The sections of the pipeline closer to Kupiansk are probably better guarded, or were cut long ago, forcing the orcs to surface instead of pushing through. Whatever the case, once the Ukrainians figured out what was going on they hit the offending tunnels, which conveniently pass under Ukrainian-held positions.
How long it will take to mop up the incursion is unclear, however the scale of the advance was never liable to be sufficient to actually take Kupiansk. Infiltration is a pain, but requires an intensive conventional assault to make good, or it’s usually a futile waste of lives. The Japanese learned this many times in the Pacific War. Though there were instances where it worked, and every now and again the orcs can be expected to get lucky.
So cutting these connections and improving security in the northern Kupiansk suburbs look to be pretty much mandatory. It is my hope that not all of Ukraine’s corps have been fully deployed, and one will soon join the 10th to cover the Kupiansk front.
Siverskyi Donets
Muscovite pressure in the Siverskyi Donets valley is still strong, and teams of infiltrators in civilian clothes have been reported entering Yampil. The forests here make total control of the area difficult, but also limit orc use of heavy equipment. At the moment Moscow’s plan looks like a simple attempt to push up the woody part of the valley through Dronivka and Zakitne in hopes of building up enough forces to storm Siversk and Yampil. The road to Lyman will then be open.
3rd Corps has the job of stopping this, and continues to slow the enemy advance by pressuring the orc right flank on the bridgehead over the Zherebets. However, no visible progress has been made towards eliminating it, so the pressure continues to mount on Lyman. 3rd Corps probably enjoys tearing apart the orc assault troops and their logistics trains as they try to project over the Zherebets, but the risk of steady enemy infiltration through the forests to the south to my mind demands elimination of the northern wing of the orc push.
11th Army Corps, covering the span between Chasiv Yar and the Siverskyi Donets, has a nice mix of brigades in 24th, 30th, and 54th Mechanized, 56th Motorized, 81st Airmobile, and 127th Heavy Mechanized. But the corps has to keep an eye on two distinct orc advances, the one near Siversk and the ongoing pressure around Chasiv Yar. This formation also sits on the crucial road linking Bakhmut and Sloviansk. It had better never get caught out, or Ukraine’s position in Donbas will be in serious jeopardy. Another reason for Third Corps, if it can, to stabilize the area north of the Siverskyi Donets.
Kostyantynivka
The Muscovite offensive through Toretsk and Chasiv Yar is either pretty much defeated, or taking an unusually long operational pause. Ukraine’s successful defense of the approaches to Kostyantynivka is an impressive victory, on par with the defeat of the orc assault on Sumy. 19th Army Corps looks to be one of the quieter, but extremely effective, formations in Ukraine’s arsenal. Probably helps that 11th Army Corps and 1st National Guard “Azov” Corps are on the flanks.
Moscow is likely to reinvigorate the assault eventually, and there is a definite possibility that the enemy will try to envelop Kostyantynivka by reaching Druzhkivka. 11th Army Corps has to cover both Siversk and Chasiv Yar, so could be vulnerable to pressure hitting both of its flanks at once.
The Ukrainians should be able to easily transfer reserves between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, though, and that makes the success of any gambit like this fairly dubious. Moscow has proven able to force Ukrainian defenders back five or even ten kilometers in a week of relentless meat assaults on a narrow sector, so Ukrainian commanders always have to be prepared to get out of the way and punish the attackers from the flanks until momentum is exhausted.
Pokrovsk
It’s still a very tense situation in and around Pokrovsk. Fortunately the Ukrainians presently have it under control, holding the line in Pokrovsk proper against more direct infiltration attempts from the south, repelling moves to break through to the west, and actively destroying orc efforts to hold on to the bridgehead over the Zherebets.
The Ukrainians look to be slowly strangling the orc vanguard in a repeat of the tactics that worked in Sumy. Reports suggest that Moscow has been feeding fresh brigades in, but with all their supplies passing over narrow, predictable routes, it’s pretty much a slaughter. Can the orcs intensify the meat waves faster than Ukraine can thin the herds?
Again, the lines displayed on maps only indicate preponderance of control. The actual front line is a porous skirmish zone up to twenty kilometers wide where each side has to struggle to support and supply deployed forces from more secure nodes. Ukraine fighting closer to logistics centers in areas of extensive cover is allows for highly efficient attrition of the enemy.
Moscow’s ability to field large numbers of drones does pose a major hazard for Ukrainian troops, especially those trying to move around. Getting supplies into Pokrovsk and casualties out is now a campaign unto itself, which is why I am leaning towards Ukraine’s main counteroffensive efforts in the near future aiming at giving Pokrovsk, Lyman, and Kostyantynivka some breathing room ahead of winter.
Don’t want the orcs setting up shop in cozy basements. Eventually Moscow will catch up with Ukraine on drone-based logistics, making infiltration more sustainable. That will in turn demand that more Ukrainian infantry to cover the line.
Robotics is advancing in leaps and bounds, but full automation of infantry duties remains highly challenging. The saga of trying to field safe autonomous civilian vehicles is a useful model. So many rare confluences of circumstances come together to throw off even the best-trained models that human operators still play a crucial role.
The newest drones now being fielded in Ukraine allow an operator to relay general instructions to a drone - like destination or target for an attack - letting AI handles most of the details. A human directing a control drone at the heart of a semi-autonomous swarm is just a step or two away.
Incidentally, in my fiction saga, Bringing Ragnarok, that’s one the culminating developments of the evolution of military technology from the Second World War to a hypothetical 22nd century conflict wages across the colonized inner solar system. Networks of mostly autonomous drones shepherded by a human create mobile shields capable of dispersing incoming electromagnetic energy. Crashing into targets is another option. I developed the main plot back in 2017; it has been chilling to see Ukrainian operators employ this tactic in real life with such spectacular effects.
There’s a science to all of this. First to master it probably wins the fight for the 21st century.
True drone swarms featuring a human intelligence partnered with a learning AI at the core are a natural evolution of today’s trends. Hey, the fewer bodies in harm’s way, the better - but the number will never be zero. When one side seeks to gain drone superiority, an essential target is the other team’s operators.
With regards to the future of the Pokrovsk front, my sense of the situation is that the balance has tipped against the orcs, who lost their chance to effect a serious operational breakthrough and instead have wound up in a pitched fight in a difficult situation. Right when it became clear that Ukraine faces an imminent crisis, the reaction was swift, efficient, and has stopped 51st CAA in its tracks. 41st CAA is having no luck advancing south and west of Pokrovsk, which might mean that the enemy has to reinforce with the apparently smaller 29th CAA, presently fighting around Novopavlivka. Similarly, 8th CAA seems likely to shift from pushing towards Kostyantynivka to trying to help 51st CAA get across the Kazenyi Torets.
Standing against these composite formations - which host a gaggle of regiments, brigades, and sometimes divisions, in old-school Stalinist style - are around six Ukrainian corps, the 1st, 7th, 8th (probably), 9th, 12th, and 21st. Actual assignments and areas of responsibility are still very prospective, especially as 1st National Guard and 2nd National, 7th Rapid Response and 8th Air Assault, and 12th Army Corps don’t appear to function quite like Ukraine’s standard corps. I’m less confident about 8th Air Assault, and mostly base its presumed presence on reports that 82nd Air Assault is in the area. It could, however, have been attached to the 7th.
Supposedly 7th Rapid Response and 8th Air Assault, like 30th Marine Corps, command only brigades of their branch type. But right now, most Air Assault and Marine brigades remain split across the fronts, assigned to the toughest sectors and probably attached to the local corps. Confusing matters further, field command elements of these corps also seem to manage an area of responsibility along the front line that includes non-type brigades. My assessment is that these larger corps have separate field and administrative staffs, allowing them to manage brigades in the field and also cover the specific logistics and training infrastructure for Air Assault and Marine brigades that lets be attached where needed.
The 1st Azov and 2nd Khartia National Guard Corps seem to operate along the same lines, though in their case National Guard brigades do appear to be grouping together more, save for those assigned to 12th Army Corps. That’s part of what makes Ukraine’s grouping around Pokrovsk so interesting: the corps there seem designed to be rapidly reinforced. 7th Corps looks to be spearheaded by 25th Airmobile, holding in Pokrovsk, with 82nd Air Assault leading the 8th if it’s actually there and not in reserve. 12th Corps has the veteran 72nd Mechanized Brigade at its center, and 1st National Guard boasts the Azov Brigade. 68th Jaeger is a quite well-regarded brigade at the heard of the 9th, and 21st Corps features both the esteemed 93rd Mechanized and also the now-veteran 155th.
It would fit well with Syrskyi’s apparent strategy for the fight in Donbas to have a full five or six corps unleash near-simultaneous spearheads with their assault regiments and Air Assault and Marine Brigades in the vanguard. Objective: shatter the 41st and 51st Combined Arms Armies and establish a defense line east of Pokrovsk to hold through winter.
First, the Ukrainians will have to beat back the reinforcements Moscow is sending. Hitting them as they move in is ideal, so good thing Ukraine is rolling out a series of operational strike drones, some simply repurposed long-range drones that trade fuel capacity for a bigger warhead.
Southern Vovcha
The biggest trouble spot on the line right now is still the southern Vovcha front, where 20th Army Corps is having a tough time holding back elements of up to four CAAs, the 35th, 36th, 5th, and 29th. The commander of the 20th was recently relieved, despite the corps successfully striking back on the northern flank of its sector.
Maybe this attack was meant to accomplish more, or possibly the commander is being punished for the orcs crossing into Dnipro district, whether because of politics or the loss of important fortifications. Personally, I’d put my money on the corps commander telling Syrskyi that he’d be able to hold the line, then demanding that his soldiers retake doomed positions when overly optimistic assumptions don’t pan out.
But I’m not sure what Syrskyi was thinking having only one standard corps plus local Territorial Guard battalions in this area given the concentration of enemy forces. Even if the plan is to pull back towards the forests along the Vovcha, which makes sense, that leaves a corps-sized gap between Huliaipole and Pokrovske.
Were I in Ukraine’s position, the potent 18th Army Corps currently fighting up in Sumy would go here, replaced by the 14th or 15th, which still seem to be in the final stages of deployment. If the other can handle Kharkiv, allowing the 16th to redeploy to Kupiansk, that would seem to effect a better balance.
Ideally, a chain reaction along the front would result from a successful counteroffensive in Kupiansk that allowed Third Corps to clear the orc bridgehead over the Zherebets that’s trying to reach Lyman. Elimination of this salient would in turn stabilize the Siversk area, allowing 11th Corps to focus on guarding the approaches to Sloviansk and Chasiv Yar. That frees the corps handling Kostyantynivka from worrying about one of its flanks, which ought to stiffen the defense around Toretsk and the Kleban-Byk reservoir. Combine that with a major pushback around Pokrovsk, and the door opens to a counteroffensive aimed at Velyka Novosilka.
At least in theory, a systemic approach of this kind is one way to manage a large-scale counteroffensive while leaving most corps able to focus on their sector alone. Coordinating multiple corps, as would have to happen around Pokrovsk, is a job for a quasi-army level command, probably run by Drapatyi. Based on present conditions, this is how I’d play it this fall. We’ll see what actually happens over the next few weeks.
Southern Theater
Orikhiv
The commander of 17th Army Corps being relieved because of some minor territorial losses on the Orikhiv front that came at the standard horrendous cost for the orcs is odd, but there’s probably more to the story. That incident a few weeks back where a Ukrainian POW was sent on a death march by the orcs only to be killed by a Ukrainian drone after a long hike to ruscist lines could have stemmed from a Ukrainian fighter left out on a limb by command and left with no choice but to surrender. Him dying by drone not only makes for the kind of propaganda the orcs love most of all, even if it was entirely their fault, but reeks of an attempted cover-up. That kind of thing has to be quashed fast.
Regardless, Moscow’s push towards Stepnohirsk is still stuck, and all attempts to break through Ukraine’s defense around Mala Tokmacha, on the other side of the Orikhiv front, have failed. 58th Combined Arms Army has not done well, and probably needs Moscow to stop allocating forces from the adjacent 35th to the southern Vovcha front if the orcs want to push 17th Army Corps out of Orikhiv. This frontline town is another fortress allowing Ukrainian drone operators to strike enemy targets as far away as Tokmak, Moscow’s corresponding frontline hub.
Huliaypole may soon become its own front - hence the need for another corps in the area, fast. At present 17th Army Corps is handling a very wide frontage, so if the 20th is pushed back from the Vovcha, the Ukrainians will have a new crisis to contend with. At present, it looks like only this stands to give Moscow a snowball’s chance in hell of pushing on Zaporizhzhia.
Kherson
Same story as the last few dozen weeks in Kherson, I’m afraid. Each side’s drones and artillery hunt for targets, which the orcs define as literally anyone. If kicked out of a place, they treat everyone who didn’t go with them as traitors. Part of the brand.
Battles for various islands and landings in the delta continue, but remain inconclusive. Moscow has begun to move troops away from Kherson to reinforce other fronts, a process that sure looks to be connected to the Ukrainian hit on the railway to Crimea a couple weeks ago. If the flow of resources Moscow can sustain to the effective islands of occupied Crimea and Kherson drops, so must troop densities. Especially when they’re needed in places the Ukrainians are a lot more likely to launch a serious campaign.
Staff Affairs
Turning back to the matter of the Muscovite war on Ukraine appearing to have reached its endgame at long last, the ever-expanding and intensifying Ukrainian strike campaign is only one component of the victory equation. Efficient and effective action in the ground fight remains of paramount importance, and it is here where Ukraine’s corps will make or break the situation.
As covered above, the commanders of two corps, the 17th and 20th, were reportedly relieved and replaced because of needless personnel losses on the Dnipro and southern Vovcha fronts. I’m sure the usual suspects will insist that Syrskyi is punishing them for not holding fixed positions he set out on a map, but the replacement of ten to twenty percent of corps commanders soon after they begin work is to be expected. Not everyone will make the jump from effective brigade to corps leader. Signs should emerge quickly. If, say, a corps leader is wrong more often than a random blogger across the world, that’s probably one. Not saying this has ever happened, but if it does, use that metric, people.
I have not, however, seen much obvious evidence of either corps making serious mistakes. Falling back towards the Vovcha’s wooded banks, where there’s a nice steep slope on the Ukrainian-held side, is sensible. Letting the enemy fight to cross a death zone along the Dnipro, same.
By and large, I mostly take the change of command as probably confirming there is no evidence of Ukraine preparing a push towards Volnovakha. The orc progress to the northeast of Huliaypole would seem to indicate that the Ukrainians don’t have forces here sufficient to make a go for something that big. Though it has to be said that if Syrskyi did aim to attack in this area, he’d be very concerned about where these corps held the line. And he wouldn’t want to reveal the presence of the multiple corps that would already have to be forming up in preparation for a move in this sector.
Still, what’s almost certainly going on here is that the 17th and 20th corps both hold very long stretches of front - up to 75km each, depending on where the boundary between them is located - best guess right now is a bit east of Huliaypole. Each brigade in these corps has to handle a full fifteen kilometers of frontage, so infantry is bound to be thin on the ground.
In my estimation, Syrskyi is holding back reserves to sustain intensive activity on a different front, economizing by shorting this sector. Is this the correct choice? Time will tell. I don’t see it as necessarily wrong. War is all about tradeoffs, same as any other kind of investment.
I am beginning to lean towards the position that Ukraine will not benefit from a classic, concentrated push on a select front after all. Thanks to the role cover now plays in coping with drones, the superior operational rhythm is looking to be distributed pulses of action when local conditions allow that aim to locate operational level weak points that force whole combined arms armies to change their focus. You seek the same dynamic synergy as in any other combined arms operation, but on a different scale and with a highly irregular tempo.
The Dobropillya counterattacks are, so far, an excellent case study in how this can work. Once Muscovite forces expose their flanks in a push towards some area they aim to build up numbers for subsequent moves, the Ukrainians come in to cut off their logistics and starve them out over the course of a few weeks. The orcs constantly reach areas of cover and get stuck, command pushing bodies in to replenish those killed until they run out and have to rotate a whole brigade, slowing down operations across that sector and creating space for local counterattacks.
Ukrainian corps are essentially grinding down incoming assault waves trying to land on islands. They then use assault troops to surround the survivors when the reinforcement flow weakens. Drones are invaluable in reducing it, choking off Moscow’s combat potential not unlike wildland firefighters will tackle a blaze here in Pacific America once the fire front has broken up.
Launching larger-scale offensive operations is a matter of having several corps working laterally towards distinct, but mutually supporting objectives. The goal is to seize islands of cover in advantageous positions. Once occupied, inbound enemy forces get chewed up by drone operators either in the newly-seized sector or supported by signal relays. Slowly but surely extending an area of control into space the enemy needs to supply and reinforce, Ukraine wedges the occupiers out, destroying substantial combat power in the process because the orcs won’t retreat, and instead have to keep shoveling resources in.
Eventually the pace of Ukrainian advances should start to pick up substantially once the attrition rate in one or more corps sectors rises too quickly for Moscow to ship in enough scarce operational reserves. Muscovite troops have to get from concentration areas well behind the front. This makes planning supply and reinforcement flows carefully very important, as the system lacks tactical flexibility. Ukrainian assault teams can exploit this.
Ukraine looks to have made the right choice in structuring the corps of augmenting a manageable group of line brigades who focus on maintaining their own sector with whatever supporting assets they need. Specialty brigades, regiments, and battalions can be coordinated within a brigade’s sector by corps command, effectively doubling or tripling its strength for a time. That should solve the problem of brigade seams being exploited; though corps-level boundaries will remain, the smaller number of corps as opposed to brigades should make coordination a lot easier.
To cope with changes in the enemy’s disposition, a corps’ assigned sector can be widened or narrowed at need. If narrowed, some brigades can sit in reserve; alternatively, each brigade can cover a proportionally narrowed sector, perhaps deploying one or two instead of three or four battalions forward, with the other third assigned in operational reserve recuperating from working in the field.
Ukraine’s corps ought to have the flexibility needed to hold their sector and conduct independent counterattacks without substantial coordination from Kyiv. The most likely location for a major counteroffensive, then, is one where Ukraine can quickly concentrate several corps in a narrow area, one primary and two covering the flanks, then send assault units to advance on converging axes towards an orc supply chokepoint. Coupled to extensive operational level strikes and damage to the enemy’s strategic logistics, this can enable Ukrainian corps to literally dismantle a target combined arms army.
Encirclement is the most efficient means of destroying large chunks of the enemy’s combat power in a short period of time. If corps can combine to beat up on combined arms armies, the tide in the field will turn. And Putin will suddenly be coping with a whole new and highly unpleasant reality.
Aviation Duel
Ukraine lost an Su-27 Flanker fighter and its pilot on a combat mission in Zaporizhzhia last week, but at least this didn’t portend a trend. The Sushka, as I’m told Ukrainians refer to most Sukhois, is a big jet. Pretty, and incredibly maneuverable, but easy to detect on radar. If a lurking S-400 is going to score an ambush on one Ukrainian combat jet, I’d expect it to be a Flanker.
An orc interceptor like an Su-35 model Flanker or MiG-31 Foxhound using one of their R-37 very long range missiles might also be responsible, though with them usually a Ukrainian pilot should have more warning and so better chances of escaping. I have to hope that it’s now a matter of months before a Ukrainian company produces at least a few very-long range air-to-air missiles, at least a test batch. In terms of priority, that ought to come right after a domestic Patriot equivalent, which Ukraine has already announced is under development. A missile with that range has got to talk to Saab AWACS, since F-16s don’t have the best gear, but using an Su-27 as a kind of reusable booster for a missile totally controlled by an AWACS ought to work.
Even one confirmed kill using a domestic system would force the orcs to rethink how they risk their precious jets - again. Note how Vipers felled or damaged by orc actions remain exceptionally rare? Clear-cut example of Ukraine merely gaining a capability and the enemy taking precautions to avoid being victimized. Muscovite jets are, at least in theory, superior to Vipers. But they aren’t winning aerial duels, even when Vipers approach the front close enough to toss bombs.
Strike Campaigns
Muscovite sources lately published an assessment of Ukraine’s missile inventory, and that just a few dozen ATACMS and Storm Shadow weapons in Ukraine’s inventory have forced the orcs to adapt in so many ways is a testament to the power of what the enemy thinks you might do with a capability. Israel and the USA are only deterred from attempting full-on regime change in Iran because even half of Iran’s missile arsenal is enough to inflict unacceptable levels of damage on Israeli and American interests. Team Trump is unlikely to be deterred from victimizing Venezuela or alleged leftists because neither has enough of the right firepower.
Even without using classic missiles at all, just long-range heavy drones and probably some miniature cruise missiles, also called jet drones, the Ukrainian brutalization of Moscow’s oil industry continues apace. A big export terminal near St. Petersburg got whacked in the most brazen and impactful of the recent attacks. Refineries, including some pretty massive ones, are burning bright, fresh strikes knocking them back even as repairs from prior hits are completed.
The mighty orc air defense system, which is supposed to protect the country from American stealth fighters and cruise missiles, is being checkmated by Ukraine’s drone game. Moscow hasn’t enough aerial radars or air defense systems to cover both the front and the entirety of its own territory. Drones and soon Flamingo cruise missiles will always find their way to targets deep inside the empire. Ukraine is big enough that it struggles to cover all its territory. Moscow’s challenge is probably two full orders of magnitude, a hundred times, greater.
Ukrainian leaders are even referring to the ongoing Oil Campaign of 2025 as a form of sanctions - nice prod at the Team Biden idiots who were insisting three years ago that their pathetic sanctions would have the Muscovite economy on its knees in mere months. It’s funny to be labelled an optimist when it comes to Ukraine these days, when in 2022 it was so popular to publicly profess that Ukraine didn’t even need traditional arms because the war would be over as soon as the ruble cratered. I dissented.
Well, as it turns out, an economy can flex in a dangerously maladaptive direction - for a time. Several years, apparently, so long as you happen to have a couple generations worth of kit sitting in warehouses. But while coping with sanctions is entirely possible, coping with sanctions and pushing the war economy to its physical limits without any hope of compensating gain is suicidal. Another reason that Putin really, really needs Ukraine’s lines to somehow finally crack. He needs a ceasefire more than Ukraine does, but knows admitting it proves his weak position.
Naval Matters
Now that Ukraine is fielding drone carriers able to send small strike drones up to knock out expensive deck equipment on warships, the remnants of the Black Sea Fleet are just about handled, no daring long-range strike by Vipers toting Harpoon missiles required. I’ll admit, having run the Janes Navy Fighters equivalent of this mission numerous times as a kid - albeit with F-18 Hornets - I have a real soft spot for Ukraine inflicting a Pearl Harbor on Sevastopol or Novorossisysk. Unfortunately, someone in the marvelous American military establishment back when thought it wise to dispense with dedicated interceptor jets, like the F-14 Tomcat, and it’s very-long range Phoenix missiles. So bombing orc ports probably wasn’t viable thanks to enemy jets having learned the correct lesson from the late Cold War about keeping the enemy at a distance.
An intriguing possibility is that Ukraine’s destruction of a fuel train on the line from Volnovakha and previous damage to the Kerch Strait bridge have constricted orc logistics in Crimea and Kherson to the point that an actual multi-day Ukrainian landing somewhere along the coast is not out of the realm of possibility. Improved ability to conduct regular resupply by drone could allow a small team to take a village and secure a perimeter. Once an initial base of operations is established, drone operators can set up shop, creating a death zone ten or twenty kilometers in diameter.
This could conceivably be run as a raid, the teams extracted after a few days, as soon as the orcs started to react. A far more likely naval move of this nature would see Ukrainian troops move into the Tendra spit area, on the opposite mouth of the Dnipro from Kherson. Air support makes the critical difference in any venture of this sort: if the glide bombs can be kept away, a sufficient density of drone operators ought to be able to lock down ingress routes.
Concluding Remarks
Another week has passed, and around seven thousand more orcs have become statistics, half of the fatal kind. On and on it goes, but an end to the madness is finally in sight.
The road has been an order of magnitude more bumpy, winding, and frankly moronic than anticipated, but here we are: what American military gear is required and the intelligence support the US offers to NATO are still flowing to Ukraine, Team Trump’s really dumb choice to side with Putin to the degree it could get away with notwithstanding. The Europeans, alarmed by the dysfunction gripping their former protector, are mobilizing their resources. Ukraine is up to meeting about 60% of required military production and 50% of the overall war budget on its own. Europe can easily afford $60 billion a year to neuter the chief danger to European freedom.
The USA could too, with a Pentagon budget of $800 billion annually, which comes to about $6,000 for the average taxpaying household - and half of all federal income taxes collected. Less than ten percent of that annually, and one of the USA’s two biggest military threats is handled. Now that’s a deal!
Well, if American leaders want to shoot themselves in the face, let them. What the USA is doomed to go through until the present age of national dementia passes with the generation mostly responsible for powering it, it’ll have to cope with alone. The rest of the world will be fine, because the Ukrainians have shown everyone how to fight an actual war.
Lessons are there for anyone to learn. Sometimes I wonder if that’s a really bad thing. Not that it matters. Science will out.
Terrific readout as usual, with additional hope for an early end to this madness. Your new analysis will surely be borne out by events as has happened in the past. Well done.
"it does almost look like those who thought Wagner’s revolt an FSB operation gone wrong were onto something"
🤔
"from a policy perspective, losing ten thousand lives every year for two or three or even more to come is worse than losing ten thousand over the next three months if that sacrifice brings an end to the thing. A short-term quadrupling of the casualty rate in exchange for a shot at dropping to near zero not long after is a bitter choice to have to make."
The problem is it's not an exact choice is it. There's a risk that ten thousand casualties are taken in three months AND the war continues for years to come.. Thinking back to the 2023 offensive, I wonder if there's very little appetite amongst Ukrainians for offensive casualties, compared with acceptance of defensive attrition....