I and Nelson Mandela are keeping an eye on this, but the report below from last Friday suggests that RU has tried to infiltrate Hryshyne (again) and that they are nibbling at Myrnohrad according to Ukrinform, which reports back from one of the army corps.
In order to attempt to infiltrate into Hryshyne, they must logically already be in the gray zone in Pokrovsk, otherwise wouldn’t they have tried to infiltrate into the gray zone in Pokrovsk?
And are the units in Myrnohrad engaged in some kind of combat?
This post was written last Friday, so if anything has happened over the weekend, I haven’t caught it since I can’t write on weekends.
I’m not entirely keen on this difference in reporting and sources that Vitaly is quite harshly criticized for, not to mention Deepstate and the others that we’ve been using for almost four years – it will be interesting to see who will report more truthfully in the future, but it is complicated by the constant offensives and counter-offensives, so a situation that applied yesterday is now outdated. Described as messy by someone.
But the situation was critical enough to justify sending in GUR.
Here is the altitude curve for the Pokrovsk area if anyone is interested.
https://en-ie.topographic-map.com/map-px7tdn/Pokrovsk/?zoom=9¢er=48.40076%2C37.25476
One thing that can be stated is that RU cannot withdraw more units from the Dnieper front if they should need to at all.
In 2023, the entire K1-K2 battle was actually in Bakhmut where Wagner persisted to the tune of thousands fallen, and the final number for Bakhmut was well over +20,000 fallen?
Yes, the army also wanted to achieve greatness at that time, and Vuhledar was a disaster for them, but overall, the entire front section was calm.
Today in 2025, RU is attacking on all fronts with over +1000 losses daily, slowly advancing everywhere even though Pokrovsk is the only area being discussed – the logistics of maintaining an offensive on all fronts must be enormous, and the amount of resources being consumed is also sky-high.
Combat in urban areas has proven to be difficult because RU “swarms” in with gunfire 24/7, and China’s digital battlefield is effective – now there is talk that defense should be in open dominant terrain instead, but the question then becomes how China’s digital battlefield adapts to that – better or worse?
Russian gunfire attracts less attention, of course, but the big problem is the bespectacled Chinese with his red firing button.
I would think that a city with its basements and tunnels underground should offer more protection against detection?
The fact that UA carried out an airborne operation is highly interesting – they are testing that type of warfare, and it apparently completely surprised the Russians, allowing them to sweep over Pokrovsk with their special forces.
My ever-recurring dark battle, apparently part of the special forces’ combat took place in darkness where they have a complete advantage – RU turns into prey when the lights go out.
It’s happening over at the southern front, but according to Playfra, Deepstate is actually over-reporting there.
RU is also less than a mile from Pokrovske, things have moved quickly in that area.
Northern Luhansk remains unchanged, and in Kostiantynivka, RU has gained a foothold in the urban areas.
Those who have logged equipment in the depot have begun to wonder where all the tanks and BMPs have gone because they are not being destroyed at the fronts in Ukraine, and what they have begun to suspect is that RU has built up units with heavy vehicles that are not in Ukraine.
You already knew this if you read the posts – the offensive strategic reserve.
The difference is that even T72, T80, and T64 have been upgraded and assigned to these units, not just the new equipment like T90M.
For a long time, RU invested everything in Ukraine and left its entire border with NATO undefended while expressing great fear of being attacked by NATO, which we laughed at.
Since they are not the least bit afraid of NATO, the question arises as to what they should use this well-equipped reserve for by Russian standards.
If it doesn’t fight in Ukraine, it won’t fight in a 3D drone warfare environment but against the technology of the previous war, which is what all the units were originally built for.
But Ukraine is also receiving new equipment for its offensive strategic reserve – Lynx armored vehicles have started to be delivered or are coming soon, recently Patria’s new APCs arrived, and they are getting all sorts of cool stuff.
Italy has also finally started sending from its huge vehicle fleet, and even though it’s not talked about, REMO must be hot where they are upgrading old tanks with new weapon stations all over Europe.
It is undeniable that Ukraine has a huge mechanized capability with cutting-edge equipment.
If they have good weapon stations on heavy vehicles, they should also be able to effectively combat drones, right?
Our CV90 (not in the LV-KV version) was considered capable of combating quite a lot of airborne threats.
The second question then is how Ukraine plans to neutralize China’s digital battlefield?
Interceptor drones are already available and just need to be scaled up and deployed in volume to the units.
Ukraine excels in EW, we know that.
It’s likely that they can pool capabilities at a front that gives them the advantage.
And mine clearance has already been tested on a large scale in Kursk and worked well.
Capability building for amphibious warfare – UA has hundreds of vessels in all sorts of sizes, they have dozens of our SB-90s now, for example.
Ukraine’s cause is becoming more and more ours the longer this war goes on, that’s my conclusion, and at least the Nordic countries seem politically stable and understand the seriousness of the situation, which is good.
In spring 2023, we were supposed to help Ukraine win the war as they were supposed to fight according to NATO doctrine. Two army corps had been prepared with brigades trained in Europe with brigade commanders without significant combat experience – but trained in Europe.
Experienced brigades and old hands of brigade commanders were not invited to the party.
We then forced Ukraine to attack where it was best defended, and even though the minefields were 10km deep, apparently it was supposed to work without air superiority.
The result was terrible, and that was before the drone weapon made a serious entrance – RU artillery and airpower roamed around along with a few drones.
Yes, Ukrainian politicians, officers, the USA, and others in Europe leaked the battle plan to the Russians.
Has NATO done its homework if we were to go to war?
Would air superiority have helped? Today in 2025 with a highly decentralized drone weapon, could air superiority neutralize that drone threat?
Do we have the ammunition to combat thousands of small targets?
For our own drone weapon, we do not have that today in 2025.
For Ukraine’s part, they have learned the lesson from 2025 and are able to fight in a drone-saturated environment as they show, at least in Pokrovsk.
They have shown that they can engage in combined arms warfare and have a fully-fledged drone capability.
Mechanized warfare, defense clearance, and urban combat are fully mastered by them and their SOF and special forces are among the world’s best today and are in large numbers.
They are capable of clearing deep minefields.
Their digital battlefield and kill-chain are excellent.
They have experimented a bit with airborne operations with mixed results – apparently, helicopters are easy to take out. But the airborne operation in Pokrovsk went very well from what I understand?
We haven’t seen much of amphibious warfare yet.
I believe Ukraine has a high capability for night combat and excels in it, even though no one ever talks about it.
I would argue that Ukraine in 2025 is a real threat that Russia should be cautious of because it has a completely different capability in 2025 than it did in 2023 when they trusted us.
How has Russia evolved?
China has sorted out the digital battlefield and kill-chain for them and mans it so unfortunately it works excellently.
They have adapted all weapons now so UA has a harder time shooting down drones and missiles, and the FAB has a range of 200km.
They have learned to save on platforms and their drones are launched from cheap mass-produced vehicles – the time when one could take out an expensive weapon platform and get rid of the threat is behind us.
The drone weapon is increasingly moving towards autonomous AI loitering drones and the whole package is a high-capability design produced by China.
There should be fewer armored personnel carriers and fighter jets, and with a more worn-out vehicle fleet.
In Ukraine, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored vehicles have been older models without REMO or with subpar REMO with inferior targeting systems. Very far from a vehicle modernization in UA.
They push their ground troops to the limit and then reconstitute the units, so there is no significant increase in capability there even though there are experienced combat instructors in large numbers today.
Special forces have been depleted a few times.
And overall, the tactical adaptation has shifted towards light infantry. The ground troops are probably a rather ragged group without drone support.
Yes, there are mechanized units behind them, but they are quickly depleted once they are deployed and move along the roads.
If Ukraine can only engage in a bit of maneuver warfare, the sniper fire is probably completely outclassed, assuming that the Chinese drone weapon can be targeted by suppressive fire so that the Chinese soldier with glasses has to hide under the table.
Crimea is attractive because they have the entire amphibious warfare capability at their disposal that cannot be used anywhere else.
Airborne operations have been attempted to seize terrain more than once in history with disastrous results, and Russia abandoned paratroopers in parachutes during WW2, right?
But to airdrop with helicopters and take canalizing terrain ahead of a moving assault force probably works quite well if flying in at night and the battle takes place in darkness.
For Ukraine, just continuing to retreat will not win them any war, and at some point, there will be a ceasefire which would not be positive for them.
Either they launch an offensive at some point or the oxygen is slowly sucked out – I believe a ceasefire would be fatal for them.
I don’t know if he interpreted it correctly, but Rob Lee is a credible source – he mentions +20,000 AWOL in a month, the way he phrases it, of course, I cannot read the primary source in the image under his tweet.
If there is a ceasefire, the defense forces will completely collapse.
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Russian losses in the war in Ukraine, 2025-11-10
SLAVA UKRAINI
AFU reports:
265 stridssammanstötningar
35 flyganfall
104 KAB
3 469 beskjutningar (91 från MLRS)
2452 kamikaze-dronar
Thank you for a very interesting post, Johan no 1! The pre-emption of Crimea has been going on for a while, they have been practicing airborne landings, amphibious boats with trained personnel are now in place. What is Ukraine waiting for? Could it be Gripen? I don’t usually be right but every now and then I can get a gut feeling that this is probably how it will be. I believe that Ukraine will try to take back Crimea when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place. Maybe Gripen is already in Ukraine? Who knows. Sweden will not communicate to the world that on a certain day we will send so many planes. That would be tactless. If Ukraine takes back Crimea, there will probably be large protests among the Russian population against the Kremlin regime. And that is necessary for the war to end.
👍Prepare for landing (from air and sea)!
Thank you for the analysis, yes from last Friday, but with a longer perspective, so even if things may have happened over the weekend, it does not diminish the analysis to any great extent.
The Chinese digital battlefield still leaves me with question marks, but I assume Chinese drone pilots controlling Chinese drones with surveillance and Kamikaze capabilities. And maybe add to that a Chinese command and control system?
Yes, it is clear that China sees great value in testing its military equipment in Ukraine. It would be strange otherwise, knowing that Taiwan is receiving military capabilities from the West, now also being tested in Ukraine.
Regarding the weekend (or earlier), DeepState confirms Russian advances towards Huiliapil.
A highlight over the weekend that Kupyansk has been recaptured. The latter suggests that Ukraine is also active across large parts of the front.
And ISW says that Russia has paused its offensive towards Pokrovsk, but that can’t be entirely true because what we have seen are record numbers of attacks last week (100 attacks) and the past day almost matches this level exactly (97 attacks).
“The Institute for the Study of War reports that Russian forces have temporarily slowed their offensive operations toward Pokrovsk, though analysts caution this pause is likely brief.”
If NATO’s border is not being guarded now, is this something Ukraine can exploit? But HOW?
Great post today! 👍
If the information is correct that over 20,000 deserters every month, the Ukrainian defense will soon have problems. Then, of course, it may not be impossible for some of them to be found and returned. Regardless, it is a big problem.
Machine translation of the last image in the post:
“21,602 in October. Twenty thousand six hundred two people. That is the number of army deserters last month. Officially.
This is a record. This is a very bad record.
ONE MAN IS FLEEING FROM OUR ARMY EVERY OTHER MINUTE. When you have finished reading this post, another soldier will go skiing.
Ukraine will be weaker with one more defender. And the enemy will be stronger with one person in relation to us.
I remind you that these are only official figures. In reality, many cases of unauthorized abandonment of units or desertion are not recorded.
This is the army’s biggest problem. And therefore, this is the country’s biggest problem.
An army that retreats is still capable of winning. An army that disperses, losing more and more people month by month through desertion – this is the real danger to Ukraine’s existence.
Everything we see on the maps, the enemy’s daily advances – this is partly because we lack soldiers.
We have enough drones at the front. We have enough money in the rear support. We have too few people fighting. Those currently at the front are struggling with enormous pressures because every soldier who has not fled is burdened with a double, triple load. We have huge gaps in our defense at the front because of this.
And I don’t know what to do about this, which bells to ring. We must write about this on all social networks, shout about it in all media, so that the police do not yield to responsible officials, so that voters do not yield to the police, so that millions of people with cardboard signs stand on every square in every city!
Even Pokrovsk, Kupjansk, and the still unnamed rapid Russian offensives in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia these days are not as painful as these figures. The army will retreat, but it will continue to fight. But if there is no army, there will be nothing, nothing.
The silence around this issue is terrible, criminal, and murderous for all of us. Because of this silence, we die and melt away. Who forced us to be silent about this melting of the army? Who took away our speech, why?”
The question is how is the quality of a redeployed AWOL? Do you even want it as a shooting buddy? I don’t believe in blocking units, it’s better to boost morale with good equipment that saves soldiers’ lives.
Sitting in a “safe” bunker and operating drones should be fairly attractive? Unfortunately, boots on the ground are also needed at the same time, a difficult question to solve.
As long as Ukraine goes backwards, desertions will continue, and as desertions continue, Ukraine will continue to go backwards. It is self-reinforcing.
Ukraine must break that trend by going on the offensive, of course it will be bloody, but if Ukraine can show that they can win, the soldiers will regain hope and continue to fight. Crimea, for example, would be a goal.
It sounds like they have the equipment they need, it’s the soldiers that are missing.
Offensives require many soldiers, and at the same time, the rest of the front needs to be defended, but with each passing day, the number of soldiers available decreases. It seems like Ukraine doesn’t have time on its side after all.
Even though a dictatorship is bad at fighting, they have the advantage of being able to bring in as many soldiers as they need, quality doesn’t matter, they get motivation from being abused or shot if they hesitate.
You don’t win a war by retreating, that has been said many times.
Russian Telegram-kanaler rapporterar en drönarattack mot en rysk hamn i Tuapse. Det finns också rapporter om att flygplatser i ryska städer Saratov, Penza, Samara, Tambov, Kaluga och Ufa har varit helt eller delvis stängda under natten på grund av drönarattacker i motsvarande områden.
“Overnight, Ukrainian air defenses intercepted or suppressed 52 drones, including Shaheds and Gerans, out of 67 launched. Russia also fired two Kh‑47M2 Kinzhal missiles and five S-300/S-400s. Strikes were recorded at 9 locations”
https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3m5b5qyrr2s2d
“Russia claims it’s not mobilization, just “routine work with reservists.” But recruitment has begun in 20 regions to guard “critical facilities,” following a law signed by Putin on November 4.”
“3 drones reportedly spotted flying over Belgian nuclear power plant”
Ukraine has requested Patriot air defense systems since 2022 and so far we in the West have not provided them with enough.
“Ukraine looking to order 27 Patriot air defense systems, Zelensky says
Ukraine would like to order 27 Patriot air defense systems from U.S. companies and is looking to borrow the crucial system from its European allies in the meantime, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with the Guardian published on Nov. 9.”
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-is-looking-to-order-27-patriot-air-defense-systems-zelensky-says/
N Slobozhansky-Kursk 4↘️
S Slobozhansky 26💥↗️
Kupyansk 6
Lyman 20💥↗️
Slovyansk 13💥
Kramatorsk 2
Kostjantynivka 29💥💥↗️
Pokrovsk 97💥💥💥💥↗️
Oleksandrivskij 27💥💥↗️
Huliaypillia 13💥↗️
Orikhivsk 8↗️
Prydniprovskij/Dnipro 1
💥 – noticeable pressure (9 – 23 attacks, 14 steps)
💥💥 – significant pressure (24 – 43 attacks, 19 steps)
💥💥💥 – strong pressure (44 – 73 attacks, 29 steps)
new*: 💥💥💥💥 – very strong pressure (74 – )
* previously 74 – 93, 19 steps, then 5 small stars for enormous pressure, but should instead be more steps than the previous 29, i.e. at least 39 steps to be consistent, so the scale then becomes 74 – 124, but we have never reached that on any front. However, aggregated on related front sections, TV expert Pokrovsk with front sectors. But then the question arises whether it should not be an average and not a sum. A lot of statistics.
Iphone thought that for example would become TV expert. Ok. Fine. You are the example.
💥🔥👍✊
“Confirmed: Substation 110 kV “T-25” in Taganrog is on fire. As a key node connecting high-voltage trunk lines to the city’s power grid, its failure explains widespread outages across several districts.” https://bsky.app/profile/babayagafella.bsky.social/post/3m5aobtnyoc2m
Another movie.
“Operational control in Taganrog. There were two explosions.”
https://bsky.app/profile/babayagafella.bsky.social/post/3m5anwewqe22m
And another one:
“The 110 kV transformer in Taganrog on fire.”
https://bsky.app/profile/the-hedgehog.bsky.social/post/3m56whshkqk2i
Off-Topic, Thailand – Cambodia
“Thailand has decided to pause the ceasefire with Cambodia after two Thai soldiers were injured by a landmine near the border, reports AFP.
According to Khmer Times, the decision means that the release of 18 Cambodian soldiers, which was scheduled to take place on November 12, is postponed indefinitely.
Cambodia has denied placing new landmines at the border and states that the area is still heavily mined after decades of civil war.”
https://omni.se/thailand-pausar-vapenvilan-med-kambodja/a/gwXB3A
“There was a fire in the Old Town of Simferopol, but the fire truck of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations got stuck in the mud on the road and could not pass through. Recently, sewage was being laid under the road and the road surface was completely destroyed.”
🇺🇦⚡️Defense Forces conducted rotation and evacuation of wounded in Myrnohrad, – General Staff As Major Andriy Kovalev, spokesman for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told RBC-Ukraine, the necessary weapons and ammunition were delivered to the units defending Myrnohrad the day before.
In addition, personnel rotation and evacuation of the wounded were carried out. In the same way, logistics and rotation of Ukrainian units in Pokrovsk are ensured.