The Russians are digging trenches. Did Putin forget his own mandate because of the failure at Khargou?

The front in the eastern part of the Kharkiv region froze over the river reached by the Ukrainians on Saturday and Sunday. A few days pass, and it’s not entirely clear how it’s going.

The attackers certainly liberated more than half of Izium and Kupiansk (north of Izium). A small portion of the latter city on the east side of the river, as well as the railway station and major railway lines there, are said to be still occupied by the Russians. But on Tuesday, Ukrainians tried to cross the river to the east, but with unknown results. The attack was thwarted when the bridge was blown up by the fugitives on Saturday.

In the south, a town near the river of the same name (only ten kilometers east of Isiumu) is said to have been captured by the Russians. If they are still there, it is the only bridge on the west bank of the river.

All in all, the Oskol River – from the Russian border to its estuary in the Donets – looks like a new front line. To its east, there is an area that belongs to the Kharkiv region, but all the big cities on that shore (for example, Svato or Troitske) are already Luhansk region, which has been mostly occupied by the Russians for eight years. .

The weight of the fighting has recently shifted to the Donets River, on whose southern bank a Ukrainian contingent is fighting against the Russians in the Donbass. Now the Ukrainians began to move north, supporting their weak troops who had reached Oskol. In three (and in four places) they passed through the Donets and began to attack the city of Lyman.

It is guarded by the so-called 2nd Army Corps, made up of conscripts from parts of the separatist-occupied Donetsk region. In contrast to the retreat of Russian troops from the West, it did not suffer from depression and dissolution. Defensive positions had been built in Lyman since May, which is why the Ukrainians were trapped in the woods southwest of the city. However, crossing the river at another point, they began to walk around it from the east and west. There are no Russian troops in this region – except for Ziman – and in some places the collaborating officers have left Ukrainian flags.

It is not known whether this state of affairs will last long, or whether the Russians will begin to occupy them again, but above all, whether they have the troops they can send to fight in the Donets.

– (Russian army) suffers from a lack of strength, a terrible shortage of soldiers. After six months of fighting with the loss of tens of thousands of lives, the ground forces did not have much left. (…) Where do they (Kremlin) get people from? Weapons and equipment? It’s all over. Six months have passed and independent Russian journalist Pavel Luzin believes that the army is still not left.

A recording of the testimony of an elderly sailor from the Russian Baltic Fleet who was captured after seven days of training and sent forward as a tanker. A tank attacked by the Ukrainians almost burned it down.

On the other, on the western end of the front, the Russians are slowly “intersecting” its line as planned. Near Chersoń, under pressure from the Ukrainians, they retreat towards the Dnieper, leaving a strip of land no less than 15 kilometers wide. Experts wonder if they are trying to reserve some units across the river and send them to the Kharkiv region.

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As a result of these maneuvers, however, they abandoned Kisylivka, the last major city blocking the Ukrainian army’s route to Kherson from the northwest. Chernobayevka Airport (and the Russian military’s main logistics base on the west bank of the Dnieper), about 12 kilometers from it, was within direct range of Ukrainian artillery. So far, it has been fired at least 20 times in various ways, which has become synonymous with the senseless losses of the Russian army for Ukrainians. Now it gets destroyed every day.

Despite defeats in the east and west, Russian troops continue to attack in the center of the front – in the Donbass. President Putin ordered the capture of the entire region (Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which Moscow recognizes as the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics) by September 15. Because of the defeat at Khargou, he forgot his own order, but the army obeyed it. The Russians, however, failed to advance, despite sending here the last available reserves of their command: mercenaries from the Wagner Group and units made up of prisoners who had been enlisted en masse in Russian labor camps since June.