The Russians are digging trenches. Putin forgot about him because of the defeat in Kharkov?

The front froze in the eastern part of the Kharkiv region on the river that the Ukrainians reached on Saturday and Sunday. Although a few days have passed, it’s not entirely clear how things are going.

Sure enough, the attackers liberated Izyum and more than half of Kobyansk (North Izyum). Reportedly, the Russians still occupied a smaller part of the latter city on the eastern side of the river, as well as the station there and the sides of the huge railway. But the Ukrainians, on Tuesday, tried to cross the river to the east, but the reason for this was not known. The attack disrupted the bridge that was blew up by the fugitives on Saturday.

In the south, the riverside city of the same name (only ten kilometers east of Izumo) was allegedly controlled by the Russians. If they are still there, it is their only bridge on the west bank of the river.

In general, the Oskol River – from the Russian border to the mouth of the river in Donets – seems to be a new front line. To the east of it there is a strip of land belonging to the Kharkiv region, but all the major cities on this bank (for example, Swato or Troitsky) are already the Luhansk region, which was occupied mostly by the Russians for eight years .

The weight of the fighting has recently shifted to the Donets River, where a Ukrainian group is fighting against the Russians in the Donbass on its southern bank. Now the Ukrainians began to cross to the north, supporting their seemingly weak forces which reached Oskol. In three places (and perhaps in four) they passed through the Donets and began to attack the village of Lyman.

It is being defended by the so-called 2nd Army Corps, consisting of conscripts from the separatist-occupied parts of Donetsk Oblast. Unlike the flight of Russian troops from the West, it was not affected by frustration and disintegration. Defensive positions have been built in yman since May, which is why the Ukrainians got stuck in the forests southwest of the city. However, having crossed the river elsewhere, they began to wander around it from east and west. It turns out that in this area – except for Zeman – there are no Russian troops, and in some places from which the collaborating authorities escaped from the Ukrainian flags.

It is not known whether this condition will last for a long time, or whether the Russians will begin to occupy them again, but most of all, whether they will have troops that can be sent to fight on the Donets River.

– (The Russian army) suffers from a lack of strength, a terrible lack of military personnel. If you fought for six months and left tens of thousands of dead, there wouldn’t be much ground troops left. (…) Where are they (the Kremlin) supposed to get people? Weapons and equipment? It’s all over. Six months have passed and there is not much left for the army, as the independent Russian journalist Bwe Zozhin believes.

For example, a recording of the testimony of an elderly sailor of the Russian Baltic Fleet who was captured and sent to the front as a tanker after seven days of training has already appeared on the Internet. She almost got burned in a tank hit by the Ukrainians.

At the other western end of the front, the Russians are slowly “shortening” their line as planned. Near Cherso, under the pressure of the Ukrainians, they retreated towards the Dnieper, leaving a strip of land not less than 15 kilometers wide. Experts are wondering if they are trying to pull some units across the river in this way to make them protected and send them to Kharkiv.

Read more

If so, then as a result of these maneuvers they gave Kisilyuka, the last large town blocking the road to Kherson from the northwest for the Ukrainian army. Chernobyl airfield (and the main logistics base of the Russian army on the western bank of the Dnieper), about 12 kilometers from it, was within the direct range of the Ukrainian artillery. To date, it has been shot in different ways no less than 20 times, becoming for the Ukrainians a synonym for the foolish losses of the Russian army. Now it will be destroyed every day.

Despite the defeats in the East and West, Russian troops are constantly attacking in the center of the front – in the Donbass. President Putin ordered the capture of the entire region (the Ukrainian states of Luhansk and Donetsk, which Moscow recognizes as the Luhansk and Donetsk republics) by September 15. Perhaps because of the defeat in Kharkov, he forgot his order, but the army still obeyed him. However, the Russians failed to move forward, despite the fact that their command sent here the last available reserves: mercenaries from the Wagner Group and units composed of prisoners who had been en masse registered in Russian labor camps since June.