In today’s summary:
- “Critical” situation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine north of Avdiivka – some units had to fight out of the encirclement
- Russian troops are conducting massive mechanized assaults on the eastern face of the Ugledar salient
- In the Z-environment, they are indignant about the law adopted by the State Duma banning the use of gadgets in the war zone
- During Russian air raids on Ukraine, at least four Shahed flew to Romania
- Strikes on three Russian military airfields – Millerovo and Morozovsk in the Rostov region and Saki in Crimea
- BBC Russian Service and Mediazona – Over 61 thousand people died in the war on the Russian side
- Czech Republic launches new initiative to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine in 2025
- The number of towed artillery pieces, self-propelled guns and MLRS has been significantly reduced in Russian warehouses
The situation at the front
The most difficult situation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the past week was observed in the Avdiivka operational area. Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov and analyst Tatarigami_UA characterize (1, 2) the situation as “critical”. Russian troops manage to advance thanks to numerical superiority and the active use of glide bombs and FPV drones. The involvement of the Armed Forces of Ukraine of newly formed brigades, which are not able to effectively hold the defense, also plays a role.
DeepState described the dramatic events around one of these brigades, namely the 31st Mechanized Brigade, two battalions of which, as a result of the loss of the village of Progress, were under the threat of encirclement and were forced to fight their way out of the resulting “cauldron”, despite the lack of an order from the brigade command to withdraw. In addition, Russian sources published a video with a “flag” in Novoselovka Perva, but the complete capture of the settlement has not yet been reported. As a result, the RF Armed Forces remain about 14 km to Myrnohrad (until 2016 – Dimitrov), located near Pokrovsk (until 2016 – Krasnoarmeysk).
Further south, in the area of Maryinka and on the eastern face of the Vuhledar salient, the situation is not so rosy for the Russians. The 79th Air Assault Brigade repulsed two massive mechanized assaults on Konstantinovka in a row, 57 armored vehicles took part in the first, and 16 units in the second.
As for Krasnogorovka, despite reports of the withdrawal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the city, “military correspondents” are outraged by reports about the capture of the settlement, calling them “BOLD ON THE BALL” (that’s right, in bold in capital letters) and proposing to imprison “f*cking commanders” for reports that do not correspond to reality. According to Ukrainian military observer Konstantin Mashovets, Russian troops in the area have managed to achieve only “very limited results” in recent months.
In addition, the RF Armed Forces continue their offensive in the Toretsk area (until 2016 – Dzerzhinsk). It is reported about the use of heavy flamethrower systems “Solntsepek” in this direction and continuous assaults, as a result of which the Ukrainian military is forced to retreat.
In the Kupyansk direction, Russian troops occupied the village of Peschanoe, approaching the goal of cutting the Ukrainian bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Oskol River, and also entered Sinkovka. In the north of the Kharkiv region, the enemy knocked out the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Hlyboke. In addition, Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups are operating in the border zone of the region – in parallel, the Chechen unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on a successful sortie into the Belgorod region, where they organized an ambush on the Russian military. According to Mashovets, the Russian command does not stop trying to capture Vovchansk and return to the northeastern outskirts of the village of Liptsy, attracting reserves from other directions.
The most discussed topic in the Z-environment this week was not the situation at the front at all, but the ban on the use of gadgets in the combat zone adopted by the State Duma, for violation of which commanders will have the right to send subordinates to the guardhouse for up to 10 days. As the “military correspondents” and pro-war volunteers suggest, the real purpose of the law is to limit the flow of information about problems and abuses, but in practice this will lead to a loss of combat capability. In addition, commanders will actually be able to punish any undesirables under the pretext of using phones. According to some reports, the Russian military police have already begun to enforce the law, which has not yet entered into force. We wrote more about this norm and the reaction to it in our summaries (1, 2).
In turn, a scandal developed in the Armed Forces of Ukraine around the actions of the commander of the 59th separate motorized infantry brigade, Bogdan Shevchuk, whose rash actions were reported to have led to unjustified losses. The Ukrainian Military Law Enforcement Service did not reveal the criminal orders of the commander – only individual “officials” were punished (what kind of punishment is not specified). As Ukrainian military bloggers write (1, 2), the check actually ended in nothing, and the measures taken against the brigade commander are described as “them, they don’t.”
Mutual shelling and sabotage
The command of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the past week repeatedly reported on the repulsion of Russian missile and drone strikes. According to the data:
- on the night of July 20, 13 out of 16 launched Shahed missiles and one UAV of an unknown type were shot down, three ballistic missiles and one cruise missile of the Iskander complex could not be intercepted. The strikes hit the energy infrastructure in the Poltava, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, as well as the railway infrastructure in the Kharkiv region, where Russian sources reported a strike on a train with personnel and equipment, and local authorities reported the death of two people and the wounding of three more;
- on the night of July 21, 35 out of 39 Shahed missiles were shot down, as well as two Kh-59/Kh-69 missiles, which did not reach their targets as a result of “active counteraction”;
- on the night of July 23, air defense systems shot down 7 out of 8 Shaheds, and the only Kh-69 missile launched also did not reach the target. Energy infrastructure facilities in Sumy region were damaged;
- on the night of July 24, an Iskander OTRK missile and another missile of an unidentified type were launched, they could not be intercepted, as well as 23 Shaheds, 17 of which were shot down, and the rest hit the port infrastructure in the Odessa region, injuring three people. One of the UAVs flew into Romanian airspace where an air-raid siren sounded;
- on the night of July 25, 25 out of 38 Shaheds were destroyed, and three more were “locally lost” in Romanian airspace (the country’s Ministry of Defense reported on the discovery of fragments of drones). The blow again fell on the port infrastructure in the Izmail district of the Odessa region, two people were injured. “Voenkor” Yevgeny Poddubny announced the defeat of a shipyard with three boats of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the location of “foreign mercenaries” and a fuel and lubricants terminal;
- on the night of July 26, 20 out of 22 Shaheds were shot down, the Iskander OTRK ballistic missile could not be intercepted. In the Zhytomyr and Chernihiv regions, energy facilities were hit, in the latter region, one person was also injured.
Sergey “Flash” Beskrestnov sees the reason for the “raids” of kamikaze UAVs in Romania and Belarus (which we wrote about in the previous weekly report) in experiments in the Alabuga technopark with the replacement of sanctioned components, which leads to failures in the navigation system. Also, Alabuga, apparently, produces at least one of the unidentified drones that were found this week (1, 2) in the Kyiv region. According to Reuters, such cheap drones are used to identify air defense positions, film destruction and distract attention.
Also this week, Russian strikes were announced at the Voznesensk airfield in the Mykolaiv region, at an armored plant in Kharkiv, and at a missile and artillery weapons depot in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. Casualties and injuries among civilians were reported, in particular, by the authorities of Dnipropetrovsk (1, 2), Sumy, Kharkiv (1, 2, 3) and Donetsk regions.
In turn, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to various statements, hit the following targets in Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine this week:
Millerovo military airfield (1, 2) in the Rostov region;
Morozovsk airfield in the Rostov region;
a military base, a military unit, a position of the S-300V air defense system and the Saki military airfield (1, 2) in Crimea;
Refinery and ferry crossing (1, 2) in the Krasnodar Territory.
Losses among civilians as a result of shelling were reported, among other things, by the occupation administration of the Kherson region, as well as the authorities of the Belgorod region (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). The governor of the region, Gladkov, writes about the discovery of cluster submunitions in Shebekino and Novaya Tavolzhanka, and propagandist Anastasia Kashevarova writes about the insufficiency of payments to migrants from the shelled areas, who are not enough to rent housing.
The Insider published a column by independent military analyst Colby Badvor that Kyiv needs not so much air defense systems in order to shoot down missiles flying through the territory of Ukraine, but permission to hit targets on Russian territory with Western high-precision long-range weapons. He writes that even with the supply of all the necessary batteries of air defense systems, they will not fully counter the Russian threat. According to Badvor, the RF Armed Forces should be deprived of the ability to deliver long-range strikes in principle, destroying aircraft that carry fire weapons.
Loss
The BBC Russian Service and Mediazona, together with a team of volunteers, have released an update on the calculation of losses in the war from the Russian side based on reports in open sources. According to them, at least 61,009 people have died since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Of these, almost half were not related to the Russian Armed Forces as of February 24, 2022.
The civilian population of the border areas of Russia also suffers losses from the actions of the Russian military. In the Kursk region, drunken servicemen shot at a civilian Lada-Priora (one person was hospitalized with a wound), and in the Belgorod region, a tank with a crew “in an insane state” ran over a Niva – the driver of the car died of heart failure.
Analyst Naalsio has updated the calculations of the losses of the parties’ equipment from open sources. In the Avdiivka operational area, according to him, in the period from July 12 to July 19, the RF Armed Forces lost 36 units of military equipment (a total of 1485 since October 2023), and the Armed Forces of Ukraine – 11 (a total of 293). In the Kharkiv direction, in the period from July 15 to July 22, Naalsio counted 8 lost units of Russian equipment (126 in total since the beginning of the operation) and one Ukrainian (63 in total).
This week, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost two pieces of equipment – in the Torets direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to shoot down a Russian Su-25 attack aircraft, which was the first confirmed (including Z-channels – 1, 2) loss of Russian combat aviation in several months, and in the Kaluga region, a Mi-28 helicopter crashed due to a technical malfunction, returning from “combat duty” to repel raids by Ukrainian UAVs.
The Ukrainian OSINT channel “Viyskovyi Vischun” estimated the losses of the Russian army air defense, including the Tor, Buk, Osa-AKM, Strela-10 and Tunguska systems, at 11-13% of the total number of available systems. These losses do not look critical, although they “cause significant problems” to the ground forces.
Weapons and military equipment
During the week, it became known about the following deliveries and other measures to provide military assistance to Ukraine from Western partners:
- the third German Patriot air defense system arrived in Ukraine;
- Spain will transfer equipment to Ukraine for another battery of Hawk air defense systems;
- The American company Raytheon plans to increase the production of AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, which are used, among other things, as missiles for Ukrainian NASAMS air defense systems;
- Ukraine was allocated the first tranche of profits from frozen Russian assets in the amount of € 1.5 billion, which will go to military needs and the reconstruction of the country;
- the Pentagon found another $2 billion available for allocation as military aid to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, correcting the error with the overstatement of the cost of previously supplied weapons and military equipment;
- Denmark and the Netherlands will transfer a batch of 14 Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine by the end of the year, they were repaired by the German concern Rheinmetall;
- The UK plans to resume the production of artillery barrels for 105-mm L119 howitzers and 155-mm AS90 self-propelled guns, previously supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
- The Czech Republic is launching a new initiative to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition for 2025. Unlike the current one, where ammunition was purchased outside the EU, the new one will involve five Czech defense companies, which will produce artillery rounds at the expense of European donors;
- Poland is preparing the 45th package of military assistance to Ukraine, which will include, among other things, a large amount of ammunition;
- Slovakia, whose government has refused direct military assistance to Ukraine, supplies most of the artillery ammunition produced in the country to the Armed Forces of Ukraine through commercial contracts with third countries (next year production is planned to be increased to 200 thousand units);
- Bulgaria is completing the formation of a new package of assistance to Ukraine, which will include ammunition and equipment that turned out to be unnecessary for the country’s armed forces;
- Latvia has sent another batch of “more than 500” drones to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the plan to expand the production of PAC-3 anti-missile missiles for the Patriot air defense system in Japan has stalled due to a lack of guidance heads supplied by Boeing. Now it will be possible to increase production from 30 to 60 missiles per year no earlier than 2027. However, in addition to Japan, Ukraine can count on several more potential partners, in particular the Republic of Korea, Israel and Argentina. Read more about what weapons from these countries would be useful to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and what Vladimir Putin’s actions have to do with it in a new article by The Insider.
The Ukrainian defense industry, in turn, continues to supply the troops with modernized armored combat vehicles – the 57th Mechanized Brigade received the BMP-2 with a remotely controlled combat module BM-7 “Parus”. The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to supply volunteer funds – in particular, ex-President Petro Poroshenko announced the transfer of more than 3000 FPV drones (including those with thermal imaging cameras) and 40 “trench electronic warfare” systems.
The Russian defense industry, in turn, is supplying the army with new mortars and modern (and not just modernized Soviet) tanks, and is also likely expanding the production of drones in the already mentioned Alabuga special economic zone. The growth in arms production is increasing due to smuggled sanctioned machine tools (including South Korean) and components – they were found, in particular, in the Russian Kh-101 missile, which hit the Kyiv children’s hospital “Okhmatdyt” on July 8. However, it became known about the reduction in the re-export of Western microchips through China and Hong Kong by 20% over the past six months due to “aggressive law enforcement by the American authorities.”
According to a group of Ukrainian OSINT researchers, during the war years, the number of towed artillery pieces, self-propelled guns and MLRS in warehouses in Russia has significantly decreased. Nevertheless, the authors predict that in the next three years, the depletion of stocks of artillery systems should not be expected, but Russian artillery at the front will degrade due to the use of older systems, which will lead to a deterioration in counter-battery combat and an increase in losses, including trained personnel.
The Russian military at the front, waiting for new and old equipment, are equipping armored vehicles and trucks in the style of Mad Max, installing “braziers” on tanks (in two layers) and ground drones, hanging dynamic protection on howitzers and begging for old VAZ cars for fire support groups at airfields. As a protection of reconnaissance drones from Ukrainian FPV drones (which began to hunt scouts with sticks), extreme measures are used – obscene inscriptions on the wings.