Ukraine report, 6 November 2026

This one you have to post, ”you got no cards” 🤣🤣

Zelensky has survived many, and even though I sit in Europe and focusing on the UA war gives me protective glasses, I feel that Trump’s direct approach to Putin in the weeks before the election was not received positively at all in the USA. That Zelensky then spoke plainly on every media channel he managed to sneak into was a joy to see.

A 4.5 years of confinement “finally” slipped out of me.

Besides that, many newly elected Democrats seem very reasonable centrist politically and the D got a strong mandate so the extremes won’t become kingmakers – fun and good for the USA. All luck and success and I hope you find your way back to your friends in Europe because we have been a bit worried.

Unfortunately, there is much more to say about the increasing hybrid war but even more is happening in Ukraine so that will have to wait until next week, also it’s a bit rough and needs polishing.

If you have read the posts you know that UA has prepared offensive reserves for a couple of years and recently Zelensky said the army wanted to start its offensive already last year but they had to hold back.

Now their drone and anti-drone weapons are fully deployed, the corps system is ready and the command change completed.

The offensives we have seen so far are within the corps themselves or the new MILOs formed and within their mandate – the new defense minister delegates heavily which has quickly proven to be positive.

Hard to say exactly by the meter but RU is retreating in several areas, their focus points for their own offensive have either stalled or gone backward, but in some places they are conducting their own offensive operations – probably where UA defense is weak because there are corps that are not prioritized at all.

Since they have advanced so long they are beyond well-established defense lines and when conducting offensive operations you don’t think much about prepared defense, and then it’s Russia so everything is chaos in normal mode anyway.

We are starting to hear more and more about Russian units shifting to defense and in some places withdrawing to established lines – you should not leave them alone at all so they don’t get time to mine themselves in.

A little flashback is that Ukraine already in 2023 had drone cameras that saw the mines in the ground after a sunny day when they were small glowing dots against the colder ground that cooled faster. With today’s technology in 2026 they probably get exact coordinates on the mine too so minefields are considerably easier to identify today.

Then they have to be cleared of course but finding a weak spot or even an unmined path through is quite easy now.

Then there are probably solutions with drones that simply go directly to the mines’ coordinates, could be small rascals for example in large numbers.

Anyway, they have this up their sleeve for their own violent offensive and RU has probably counted on a good minefield still being a brake – so how surprised they will be.

Now Drapatyi has said the following – a large violent blue-yellow offensive will break the back of the Russian bastards. He got that speech from me but unfortunately changed some words, I wanted to include two long paragraphs about revenge for Svensksund but he removed them completely.

Really want to hammer in that since the disaster in 2023 which was designed by us in the West unfortunately and not with the aim to win the war but rather to make Ukraine willing to negotiate, they have patiently built up an enormous armored fist.

It has been revealed through massive deliveries of mine-clearers, combat boats, shrapnel protection and tanks where we posted the videos that came up.

For over a year UA has been able to use the drone weapon with a sparse line of fire for its defense and then they have been able to rest, equip and resource many brigades.

All of Europe is involved in REMO of vehicles where older vehicles get new weapon stations but for maybe 1.5 years you have heard very little. Before all countries wanted to show what they sent and Ukraine to show what they got – completely silent now.

The only thing we hear is from Russian accounts up in northern Luhansk for example where they complain about ”rested, alert, top-equipped new brigades that came from nowhere.”

Russia is doing exactly the same thing and absolutely has the reserves media and analysts in the West say they don’t have but they do not intend to burn them away in Ukraine.

Now this summer the last puzzle piece needed came – UA medium-range drones for fire control of access routes in depth.

They can now with all indirect capabilities in their arsenal soften up a defense in a geographic area very effectively, they have their own FAB bombs for example so no bunker is safe. FPV drones can fly into any opening no matter how small and the all-seeing eye is now truly all-seeing – not easy to hide at all for the Russian defense.

Then their medium-range drones deny movement to and from the area, first they get no maintenance and when it blows up the task forces cannot advance without being wiped out on the road.

At some point UA units start attacking within this geographic area under anti-drone protection and information superiority. The 2026 model seems to be smaller units for mobile combat but up in northern Luhansk they have already proven what we have discussed for a long time – when you have drone superiority you fight mechanized.

Already during 2023 when they cleared trench systems the battalion or company command sat in a command center and could direct the attacking force by the meter ”five enemies 20m ahead behind the bend”, then ”go on defense in the eastern trench because beyond that they gather for a counterattack”.

I still don’t understand how the attacking group in the middle of the confusion of trenches can distinguish the cardinal directions but I have a guess that the drone must base itself on the group’s own direction regardless of its own position and then use – ”right, left, back, forward” just like we did with vehicle drivers in the military during attack. You sat with the map but had to convey the instruction to the driver in the way he sees ahead and can drive by. Yes, ”left” sometimes went straight into a barn instead of the crossroads 100m ahead but over time drivers and vehicle commanders found such a good balance that they could charge forward at full speed and never go wrong.

When the USA or UK tried this sometime it made the information superiority completely battle decisive and it is now standard with all fighting units in Ukraine and probably why together with the drone weapon it goes so well and loss ratio is so negative for RU.

It doesn’t matter what defense you have, you are already second best from the start and it’s only a matter of time before the area is cleared – you are a brake and time is measured in the number of soldiers in the area.

RU is now attempting a defense in depth but is beginning to face personnel shortages, so at some point UA has broken through the prepared defense and there is not much behind it. RU essentially has no strategic reserves in Ukraine now; those that exist are outside the country. At some fronts, they also lack rapid reaction forces behind the front line, with everything positioned in defense.

Three factors could overturn this –

-UA is still dependent on Starlink, and if they press the shutdown button when it becomes critical to give RU water breaks, it will cause damage.

-RU decides to send all its strategic offensive reserves to Ukraine and fight with everything they have; they have quite a lot if we include all the letter agencies here.

-Trump and Putin manage to trick Ukraine into a ceasefire where we in Europe threaten that if they do not stop fighting, there will be no EU.

I really want to believe that Europe now understands where this is heading; anything else would be unreasonable. But if Musk fiddles with the shutdown while RU carries out large movements and dedicates its strategic reserve, it could result in Ukraine getting stuck again. After that, Europe might consider the situation on the ground such that a ceasefire and frozen fronts are preferable when the hybrid war becomes too intense. We are not quite on dry land yet.

This will not happen before RU has caused us electricity and fuel shortages this winter, which should reasonably make us realize who we are dealing with and that you can never trust a Russian.

If none of this happens, Ukraine will soon have solved the problem with terror bombings; they are now also shooting down ballistic missiles, which is good, and have some new exciting developments underway for defense, for example this one.

The 5 refineries they drone-struck within a week represent extensive and large-scale devastation that has likely led to the shutdown of entire refineries, with about a dozen large fires per refinery accompanied by dystopian beautiful film sequences set to the latest in the Ukrainian music scene, enhancing the whole experience.

They have also targeted a node for oil pipelines and tanks, which is a central part of the distribution network; I believe it was to prevent export (or import…) from Kazakhstan?

Soon they will probably go after the gas, Yamal cross, which is a central node for gas pipelines and district heating plants in Russia.

The Russians’ major weakness in heating is that much of it is gas and district heating, making it easy to knock out with a drone strike in the right place since there are several central nodes for the gas pipelines.

Zelensky has promised extensive devastation in November, and since Russia is actively trying to blackout Ukraine, a proportional retaliation would be to blackout Russia.

The Black Sea Fleet is almost wiped out, and Ukraine now finally has its own missiles similar to Storm Shadow or Taurus that work. Kaliningrad and the Baltic Fleet are probably not safe at all going forward when we give up trying to slow Ukraine in the Baltic Sea area.

All Russian export terminals will surely also be targeted in the increasing effort, and the country Russia is already on the brink of ruin. Trump’s attempt to protect various sectors and then buy Russian has totally failed, fortunately. Apparently, wheat exports have dropped by nearly 40%, wrote some genius on johanno1.se, I think it was Pehr.

This war could already have been won/ended (several times), but each time the USA, closely followed by Europe, has done exactly what Trump tried again now – stop Ukraine and get Russia back on its feet.

Purely diabolical, but now in 2026 the difference is that Ukraine decided to fight, and we will soon see how it could have gone already in 2022, 2023, and maybe 2024. Since then, they have licked their wounds, and in 2025 they apparently judged it was too early.

Now I have a direct line to Budanov again because he has finally understood what a big braggart DenGamle is, and forgive me for being (very slightly) responsible for his wife being poisoned. Who could have guessed that the friendly consultant who bought me expensive beer as much as I could drink had hidden intentions when he wanted to know where I was going for dinner and with whom, but apparently that was the case. The world is not as it once was, and I have learned that free beer can lead to WhatsApp blocks the hard way, but now I am back and leading the war.

Up in northern Luhansk, UA has broadened the offensive to the bulge towards Borova; if you remember the last post, RU’s advanced attack vectors are now a threat to them when UA has the initiative.

The area is poorly defended on the flanks, and here too they have Zherebets at their back.

Apparently, it has also completely turned around in the Orihiv area, and one can almost sense Robotyne on the horizon again, which we have not heard about since 2023.

Russian mobilization in the way we feared is notably absent; yes, they are trying to force everyone they can to Ukraine, but it is not a large mobilization wave yet, and it has a 2-3 month lead time before it makes a difference at the fronts, and it should already have started…

Russian losses are steadily over +2000 per day, which includes seriously wounded and deceased; light injuries are not counted.

Unfortunately, you cannot count a Russian regiment as combat ineffective after 60% losses because they continue until they are wiped out nowadays.

Since they are undermanned, you could perhaps translate this to two Russian regiments being wiped out per day and 60 per month – unsustainable, I think everyone understands.

For those of you who are a bit quicker than the rest of us, you probably wonder why the mud season hasn’t slowed UA at all; maybe it’s because there is now easy shrapnel protection, shooting, and drones?

That season should have hit in October until the ground freezes with a pause in fighting. No staff with a bit of self-preservation instinct starts offensives when the ground no longer holds, except the Ukrainians apparently.

They probably get their supplies via drones?

It is clear that the tide has turned and the initiative now belongs to Ukraine – we just have to hope the three braking factors above do not occur, and after the Blue Wave election, Elon is probably very cautious with that button. Trump is also wounded, so then it remains that Putin sends everything he has to Ukraine.

But he cannot do that unless it pays off in the form of a ceasefire, so if Europe now just stays quiet and sends materiel, this war is entering the beginning of the end even if it doesn’t look like it yet. OPSEC is tight, and there is some inertia in chasing out the Russian bastards who cling to the innermost parts of their burrows and must be dragged out screaming and kicking.

We started writing days before the war began in 2022, and the times one felt hope but Europe and the USA instead crashed everything have been quite heavy, so we can guess how the Ukrainians’ mood swings have been, but now it actually starts to look really bright everywhere except in Putin’s bedroom, where it is pitch black, gloomy, and bad vibes.

If you remember, I have already negotiated with the liberation fronts in Russia, and Putin will be deep-marinated in diesel before they hang him wildly thrashing with his head down from a gas station in a suburb of Moscow, trying to get the matches going in the biting wind.

Even he probably knows that Putin’s days are numbered now, and after the Blue Wave, there are surely one or two aspirants to power who have suddenly started looking around for like-minded people in the echoing corridors of the Kremlin.

There are few people I wish to see deep-marinated in diesel besides most of the bosses I’ve had, the debt collection agencies, that dishonest craftsman, the bank, the electricity companies, corrupt colleagues, nasty classmates, and a few thousand more over the years, but Putin really deserves it – he has forfeited his right to a dignified end.