In today’s summary:
- In Kursk region, Ukrainian troops are trying to occupy the regional center of Korenevo and completely isolate the Glushkovsky district
- The Russian command has not yet transferred units from Donbass to the Kursk direction
- The Russian Armed Forces have increased the pace of their advance toward Pokrovsk; a mass evacuation has been organized in the city itself
- Ukrainian drones hit the Marinovka military airfield in the Volgograd region and almost reached Murmansk
- The names of over a hundred conscripts who went missing and were captured in the Kursk region have been established
- The US administration has not responded to a request for permission to use Storm Shadow on Russian territory for over a month
- Germany plans to cut military aid to Ukraine from the budget, replacing it with loans secured by frozen Russian assets
- Kamikaze drones from a sewer pipe and the first tank with a fully rubberized “king-barbecue” have been spotted on the front lines
- The situation at the front
- The offensive operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region has been going on for more than two weeks. In recent days, no large-scale changes in the LBS have been observed , but actions to expand the combat zone have not ceased. The presence of Ukrainian troops was reported in Olgovka , Vishnevka and Snagost on the approaches to Korenevo – another regional center, which is apparently planned to be taken after Sudzha .
Ukrainian forces also entered Krasnooktyabrskoye and Komarovka , thereby cutting off the Glushkovsky district from the “mainland” from the east. To the north, on the Seim River , the Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed the last stationary bridge (which is now probably at least unsuitable for heavy equipment) and began hunting for pontoon crossings and engineering equipment, isolating the Russian Armed Forces group stationed in the Glushkovsky district . Ukrainian troops are less than 10 km from the district center of Glushkovo , where looting by Russian servicemen has already been reported.
Z-activist and adviser to the acting governor of the Kursk region Roman Alekhin calls on residents of another Kursk regional center, Rylsk, to evacuate as soon as possible. Those who have already managed to leave the combat zone complain to The Insider about the lack of organized evacuation and the flight of officials and security forces, and are also trying to find alternative sources of information about what is happening using VPN services. Volunteers and “war correspondents” in turn criticize the general irresponsibility and alcoholism , communication problems reminiscent of the situation in the spring of 2022, and the false statements of the Coordination Council under the Russian Defense Ministry about providing the Russian group in the region with everything it needs ( 1 , 2 ).
Apparently, after more than two weeks, despite the transfer of various reserves ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ), the Russian Armed Forces have not yet managed to create a group sufficient for a full-fledged counteroffensive (recall that, according to The Insider, this will require at least 30 thousand people). The Russian Ministry of Defense continues to engage in clumsy crisis management, passing off footage filmed earlier on Ukrainian territory as strikes on the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region . Nevertheless, many Ukrainian attacks are repelled, as evidenced, for example, by the video of a close-range battle in Russkaya Konopelka . At the same time, the rear lines of defense continue to be established in the region, and the Ukrainian military is trying to prevent this as best it can, striking construction equipment with FPV drones .
So far, the Kursk operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has failed to achieve one of the main probable goals – pulling back units of the Russian Armed Forces from the dangerous Pokrovsky and Toretsky directions in the Donetsk region (this is reported, in particular, by sources of the Bloomberg publication). This is not surprising, since, as DeepState notes , the Russian command has a fairly wide choice of calmer sections of the front, from where it is possible to transfer reserves relatively painlessly. Nevertheless, even relatively calm directions can suddenly cease to be such: for example, the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported the destruction of a Russian battalion defense area in the Novovodanoye area ( geolocation ) in the Svatovsky direction , where they managed to liberate about 2 sq. km of territory.
Be that as it may, the decision not to withdraw reserves from the Donetsk region is bearing fruit – according to calculations by the publication “Agentstvo. Novosti”, the pace of advancement of the Russian Armed Forces with the beginning of the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region has only increased, and most of the occupied territory is in the Pokrov direction , where the Ukrainian military is experiencing a shortage of ammunition for the first time since the resumption of American military aid supplies, since a significant number of artillery rounds were allocated for the Kursk operation. In total, according to data published by the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Alexander Syrsky, Russian troops are now firing on average three times more shells than Ukrainian ones. At the same time, the situation has improved compared to the period from January to May, when the Russian Armed Forces had a seven-fold superiority in artillery.
In Pokrovsk itself (before 2016, Krasnoarmeysk ) , a mass evacuation has begun , with Russian military using FPV drones to strike both the city and the key highway to Konstantinovka , which is also being shelled by tanks. However, Ukrainian military observer Konstantin Mashovets believes that the Russian Armed Forces will soon conduct another regrouping, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces command has a chance to organize an effective defense based on the terrain or to thwart Russian plans to advance on Pokrovsk with a flank attack from Selidovo .
In the Toretsk direction, the Russian Defense Ministry and Z-channels ( 1 , 2 ) announced the capture of New York (in 1951–2021 — Novgorodskoye ) and even entry into Nelepovka to the north of this settlement. At the same time, DeepState reports that a kind of “strip” has been created in the village and its environs — Russian troops have infiltrated Nelepovka past Ukrainian positions, which are still in New York . According to Ukrainian serviceman Stanislav Bunyatov, the enemy cannot gain a foothold in the dilapidated village and is therefore shifting its efforts to the eastern part of Toretsk (until 2016 — Dzerzhinsk ).
The current situation has given Ukrainian military bloggers a reason to criticize the commanders of the brigades and battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ), who are unwilling to delve into the situation and organize interaction with their neighbors, who send false reports to the top, give suicidal orders, and resort to assault in response to attempts by their subordinates to influence the situation. According to Bunyatov, the front is holding up only thanks to the tireless work of individual conscientious officers.
Another problem facing the Ukrainian military is that the hunt for aircraft-type reconnaissance drones using FPV interceptors has been so successful that their own reconnaissance drones have come under attack. Ukrainian volunteer Sergey Sternenko, who is also involved in the supply of interceptors, advises aircraft -type UAV operators to put stickers on their drones that resemble the insignia of the Ukrainian Air Force in order to avoid “friendly fire.”
Meanwhile, Russian military personnel continue to fight with their own military police, which is trying to confiscate their passenger cars and “Bukhankas” used to evacuate the wounded and transport ammunition, and even prohibits movement in vehicles with white “civilian” license plates.
Mutual shelling and sabotage
The Ukrainian Air Force Command reported repelling several nighttime missile and drone strikes over the past week. According to the Ukrainian military:
On the night of August 17, Sumy was hit by an Iskander-K cruise missile, and all 14 launched Shahed drones were shot down ;
On the night of August 18, 13 out of 16 air targets were shot down, including two KN-23 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles and eight Shaheds. Another missile was not shot down, but did not reach its target either, there were no casualties;
on the night of August 19, all 11 launched Shaheds were shot down;
On the night of August 20, 25 out of 26 Shaheds, two Kh-59 guided missiles and an Iskander-K cruise missile were shot down, and two Iskander-M ballistic missiles were also launched. In the Ternopil region , an industrial facility caught fire , which led to an increase in the concentration of chlorine in the air, and in the Sumy region , an energy facility was hit , causing a power outage in 72 populated areas;
on the night of August 21, 50 of 69 Shaheds were shot down (another 16 were “lost to radar”, possibly due to EW , and one reportedly flew to Belarus ) and one Kh-59 guided air missile, and two Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles were also launched;
on the night of August 22 , two out of 10 Shaheds were shot down, two more were “lost to radar”, an unspecified number of Kh-31P anti-radar missiles and two Iskander-M ballistic missiles were also launched, it is claimed that most of them did not reach their targets;
On the night of August 23, 14 out of 16 Shaheds were intercepted, two more disappeared from radar, and two Iskander-M ballistic missiles were launched.
Alexander Syrsky presented statistics on the interception of Russian missiles and drones since February 2022. According to this information, the Russian Armed Forces launched almost 14 thousand drones during the war, mainly of the Shahed and Lancet types , 9,272 of which were shot down. Of the 9,627 missiles, 2,429 were intercepted.
Over the course of the week, Russian forces struck the following known targets:
on two groups of Patriot air defense missile systems in the Dnepropetrovsk region ( 1 , 2 ), one of which could have been a model ;
on the model of the IRIS-T air defense missile system in Sumy region ;
according to the real S-300PS air defense missile system and P-18 radar in the Kharkov region ;
on the M270 MLRS in the Nikolaev region .
Ukrainian authorities reported deaths and injuries as a result of shelling, in particular, in Donetsk , Sumy ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ), Zaporizhia and Kherson regions ( 1 , 2 ). In just one day, on August 20, five people were killed and 31 were injured in four regions of Ukraine. In addition, unexploded submunitions of the cluster warhead of the Russian cruise missile Kh-101 were found on the territory of one of the forestries in Kiev (the use of such missiles in the cluster modification was first reported on June 6 ).
The Russian Defense Ministry, in turn, also reported during the week on repelling nighttime raids by Ukrainian drones. According to the department, over the territory of Russia and the Crimean Peninsula :
on the night of August 17, one aircraft-type UAV was destroyed;
on the night of August 18 – five UAVs hit an oil depot in Proletarsk in the Rostov region , which had been burning all week. At least 15 of 76 tanks burned out , and almost 50 firefighters were injured ;
on the night of August 19 – four UAVs;
on the night of August 20 – two UAVs;
on the night of August 21 — 45 UAVs hit the Marinovka airfield in the Volgograd region , destroying several hangars, detonating an ammunition depot, destroying and damaging up to six aircraft , including Su-34 fighter-bombers that launch aerial bombs with the UMPK module . According to Fighterbomber , all the damaged aircraft were in non-flying condition due to a lack of spare parts, and the rest were able to escape the attack before the slow-moving drones arrived;
on the night of August 22 – 28 UAVs;
on the night of August 23 – seven UAVs.
Thus, according to Russian and Ukrainian military, the Russian Armed Forces launched at least 154 kamikaze UAVs and 20 missiles during night raids on Ukraine during the week, while the Russian military intercepted 92 Ukrainian UAVs (let us recall that last week the number of launched Ukrainian drones exceeded the number of Russian ones). This gave Sergey “Flash” Beskrestnov a reason to talk about Ukraine achieving parity with Russia in long-range UAVs, as well as about more effective Ukrainian air defense systems in combating air raids. In the context of the strike on Marynivka, Z-channels once again complained about the lack of mobile air defense groups and a unified system for detecting and indicating enemy drones — both measures have long been implemented in Ukraine.
In addition, as a result of a missile strike on the port of Kavkaz in the Krasnodar region , the last railway ferry on the Kerch ferry route , the Conro Trader, sank . According to the Spy Dossier channel, the strike was carried out by a Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile; the ferry was carrying 14 fuel tanks, 14 rail cars with military cargo, and 15 crew members (all were rescued).
According to the BBC Russian Service, since the beginning of the year, 64 strikes have been carried out on Russian energy infrastructure facilities, with fires reported in 48 cases. Agency. News calculated that since the beginning of the summer, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have launched more than 2,000 drones and missiles at the territory of Russia and the Crimean Peninsula , half of them from July 21 to August 22. Finally, according to Verstka, the area of Russian territory vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks has increased to 2.6 million square kilometers after the attempted raid on the Olenya strategic aviation airfield , 90 km from Murmansk .
Russian authorities and occupation administrations reported deaths and injuries from shelling, including in Donetsk , Kursk and Belgorod regions ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). According to the Russian Ministry of Health as of mid-week, 31 people were killed and 143 were injured as a result of military actions in Kursk region .
Losses
The Washington Post journalists managed to visit a Ukrainian prison for prisoners of war, through which 320 people from the Kursk region passed in 10 days , 80% of them were conscripts. The publication “Important Stories” established from open sources the names of 129 conscripts who went missing (84 people) or were captured (45 people). Nine of them are 18 years old, the oldest are 24 years old. Most are servicemen of the 488th motorized rifle regiment, as well as the 252nd motorized rifle regiment. The BBC Russian Service reliably knows about 81 missing conscripts and the death of two, and in total, according to the calculations of the publication together with “Mediazona” and a team of volunteers, 65,552 people have died on the Russian side since the beginning of the invasion.
One of the oldest fighters in the Russian Armed Forces, 66-year-old Gennady Voronov, known by the call sign “Fedorovich,” has died in Ukraine. According to the ANNA News channel, “Fedorovich” survived 67 drone hits while commanding a BARS-15 unit transport vehicle in the Avdeevka direction , but the 68th strike was fatal. In May, “Fedorovich”‘s son, a soldier, died — also in the Avdeevka direction .
Military blogger Kirill Fedorov told on air of “Soloviev LIVE” about the case of execution of prisoners of war by fighters of the “Aida group”, which is part of the “Akhmat” special forces and operates in the Kursk region . According to him, the captured Ukrainian soldiers “decided to commit group suicide.”
The Astra publication writes about a new torture chamber in Mulino in the Nizhny Novgorod region , where mostly wounded mobilized soldiers who do not want to fight are taken, as well as about another “basement” in Donetsk (on the site of City Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 ), where Russian soldiers from the 57th Regiment send “refuseniks” and keep them there under lock and key without water, food or access to the toilet.
Researcher Naalsio updated the data on the losses of Ukrainian and Russian equipment confirmed by open sources. According to his calculations , in the Pokrovsk direction , from July 26 to August 16, the Russian Armed Forces lost at least 93 units of equipment, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost at least 21 units. In the Kursk direction , according to Naalsio , in the period from August 15 to 20, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost at least 14 units of equipment, and the Russian Armed Forces lost at least 13 units.
Analyst Yan Matveyev, relying on a Fighterbomber report that Russian helicopters have recently suffered more losses from drones than from SAMs , and on the known recent losses of helicopters from ground-based air defense fire (two units), comes to the conclusion that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have successfully hit Russian helicopters with drones at least three times.
Weapons and military equipment
The Times writes that the US administration is not responding to the UK’s request to allow Ukraine to strike Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles at internationally recognized Russian territory. In addition to the US, this requires the consent of France and another European country that is involved in the production of such missiles. Bloomberg, in turn, reports that some unnamed Western partners of Ukraine are in no hurry to fulfill their promises to supply long-range air defense systems (in total, Kiev was promised five Patriot and SAMP/T systems in addition to those already available).
Also this week, it became known that German military aid to Ukraine has been frozen. In 2025, it is planned to reduce budget financing from the current €7-8 billion to €4 billion, and by 2027 – to 10% of this amount. The German government is counting on a credit mechanism secured by frozen Russian assets, agreed upon within the framework of the “Big Seven”, but it has not yet been worked out and remains legally controversial. At the same time, the Czech Republic intends to use the profits from Russian assets to finance the production of ammunition for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Germany has delivered another batch of weapons to Kiev, including the IRIS-T SLS air defense missile system, the Bergepanzer 2 armored recovery vehicle , and 14,000 155-mm artillery rounds. The Netherlands has signed a contract to produce 51 mobile anti-drone radars for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, while Latvia has delivered the largest batch of 1,400 drones to date within the framework of the “unmanned coalition.” Thermobaric ammunition of Bulgarian manufacture for the RPG-7 grenade launcher, the delivery of which had not previously been publicly known, has also been spotted in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In addition, an inflatable F-16 model with Ukrainian symbols was spotted at an arms and military equipment exhibition in Denmark ; plans to supply such models to Ukraine have not yet been announced.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Soviet BTR -60s are being modernized by installing the Parus remote-controlled combat module, the Ministry of Defense reports on the conclusion of contracts for the supply of 350 thousand drones of various classes since the beginning of the year, and former President Petro Poroshenko is supplying quad bikes, DJI Mavic quadcopters and FPV drones to the Kursk direction .
The Russian military-industrial complex, in turn, receives sanctioned integrated circuits from abroad, which are needed, among other things, in the production of missiles, and continues to send modernized T-62M tanks developed in the 1960s to the front and to de-preserve self-propelled guns from storage bases (in total, 40% of the vehicles from the pre-war stocks have disappeared from warehouses, the rest may not be in the best condition). Russia also plans to modify Soviet Yak-52 light aircraft to combat UAVs (however, the feasibility of such modernization, in particular the installation of electronic warfare systems, is questionable ).
Meanwhile, at the front, the Ukrainian military is making kamikaze drones from sewer pipes ( Dmitry Rogozin recommends adopting this practice) and adapting 60-mm rifled mortars to fire 40-mm grenades using homemade shells. The Russian military is “upgrading” the roofs of AMN-590951 armored vehicles to protect against “skids” and reaching new heights of “barbecue construction” by enclosing artillery pieces in “tsar-barbecues” and demonstrating new models of tank “tsar-barbecues” with folding beds and a covering made of rubber conveyor belt .