The pace of events on the frontlines has been rapid the past week.
A few days ago, we had a look at Ukraine’s only recent semi-victory, at the northern city of Kupyansk. Everywhere else on the frontlines, things are going very badly.
Today we will take a look at a number of locations. Lyman and Siversk (northern Donetsk oblast), Pokrovsk/Myrnohrad/Rodynske (southern Donetsk oblast), and Huliaipole (Zaporizhia oblast).
And we will also examine Ukrainian retreats on the northern border with Russia, in the village of Grabosvke (Sumy oblast), and the town of Vovchansk (Kharkiv oblast):
First of all, a brief overview of what has happened.
Yesterday, the Russian ministry of defense announced the taking of three towns - Myrnohrad, Guliaipole, and Rodynske. The towns had pre-2022 populations of 50,000, 12,000, and 10,000.
Apart from that, Ukraine’s war thinktank DeepState finally announced the taking of the town of Siversk (pre-war population 10,000) on December 24. In fact, it is clear that this actually took place around a month earlier. Siversk’s taking is significant because it opens the roads to the last major Ukrainian-held cities in the Donbass, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
How much do the Russian claims correspond to reality?
Guliaipole, a strategically located town in the south, does indeed seem to have fallen.
Rodynske, located close to Myrnograd, is also not doing very well, and has probably been captured.
The embattled Ukrainian garrison at Myrnohrad is at minimum surrounded and in atrocious condition. But is it captured?
Evgeny Norin, a reputable Russian nationalist military historian, had this interesting sentiment today:
Judging from the most recent Ukrainian reports and Russian videos, it does seem like Myrnohrad has fallen. More on that later today. What happened to its garrison remains an interesting question.
Reality and delusion
As the frontlines spiral and diplomatic pressure doesn’t let up, Ukraine’s military is under even more pressure to fudge reality. Even DeepState, the supposedly ‘independent and critical’ mapping service, has had to tread very carefully. This is also probably not unrelated to the mobilization of some of those involved in DeepState almost exactly a year ago. DeepState has become less critical of the army’s claims since then.
Bild’s Ukraine correspondent Julian Ropcke has also noticed this discrepancy between battlefield reality and DeepState’s portrayals (let alone those of the Ukrainian General Staff):
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military claims of ‘counterattacks’ at Pokrovsk, which has long since fallen to the Russians, are met with clown reactions on telegram:
Now, onto the frontlines in more detail.
The south: Guliaipole
A major trend of the past year is that Ukrainian positions in the south (red) continue dissolving while attention — and effective units — are focused on the Donbass (blue) and even more-so northern regions like Kharkiv (green).
On the 27th, Bild’s Ukraine war reporter claimed that the Zaporizhzhia oblast town of Guliaipole was captured after an extremely short battle, by the standards of this war:
On December 26, Russian telegrams released a video of their troops replacing a Ukrainian flag in the center of the town with a Russian one. It was confirmed by nationalist Ukrainian telegrams. The flag is on a statue of anarchist leader Nestor Makhno, a symbol of Guliaipole:
Writing on the 28th, Ukrainian military analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov hit back with the rather unenthusiastic retort that ‘1/5 of the town is still under our control’:
On the 27th, the commander of the unit responsible for holding the town assured Ukrainians that only a tiny group of Russians entered the city
Writing on the 28th, the Ukrainian war telegram ‘Dnipro OSINT’ ridiculed the above claims, claiming that there are over 70 Russian servicemen in the city, and that any clear line of contact (LBZ) has disappeared:
The situation in Guliaipole has certainly drastically worsened over the past week. This is not least due to the morale and organizational issues plaguing Ukrainian units in the area.
DeepState wrote on December 20 about the chaos reigning in the 102nd brigade, which is responsible for the town. A number of assault (‘shock’ is how it is incorrectly translated) units have been taking massive losses in an attempt to save the situation. Meanwhile, some of the officers of the 102nd are apparently encouraging desertion (‘SZP’) among their subordinates, and also sharing ‘Russian disinformation videos’ to further demoralize their families.
I would add that the Russians don’t need to create fake videos of Ukrainian officers beating and torturing their subordinates. Many quite real videos exist, shared by the most patriotic Ukrainian media out there. I covered that here and here.
Then on December 26, Russian forces released a video taking a leisurely tour through a Ukrainian command post in Guliaipole.
According to Ukraine’s DeepState, this occurred on the 18th:
Nationalist special ops fighters like the man behind ‘Ukrainian Militant’ have been outraged at the humiliating retreat, calling for a military tribunal over those responsible. Ukrainian Militant also warns about the dangerous advantages gained by the Russians in taking control over classified military information:
‘Officer’ was shocked by the event. I’m not entirely sure what exactly he is hinting at in this post, but the most interesting information to me was that the captured command post was 10-15 kilometers behind the frontline. With Ukrainian infantry largely absent, it is hard to prevent leaps forward by small Russian assault groups:
‘Thoughts of a Frontliner’, another special forces fighter from the Aidar batallion, was brave enough to claim that the video was somehow faked. However, he soon deleted the post, and those who reposted it in the comment section of ‘Officer’ were met with clown reactions:
Who is responsible for the debacle? The comments on the post by ‘Officer’ blamed commander of the army Oleksandr Syrsky and his trusted friend, the much-despised head of the assault forces Valentin Manko.
Manko’s assault units have been repeatedly sent to try and stem Russian advances in this area. Earlier in December, I wrote about allegations of friendly fire attacks by the 225th assault batallion on unmotivated Ukrainian troops in the 102nd territorial defense brigade. Of course, it is the 102nd brigade which was responsible for fleeing the Huliaipole command post a few days ago.
The most interesting comment on Officer’s post seemed to give insider information on what had actually happened. As usual, bizarre organizational chaos is at least partly to blame. Ukraine’s much-feted Corps reform is once again shown to have been a non-starter:
In the wake of the Guliaopole affair, many of Ukraine’s nationalist officers have once again been calling to disband the Territorial Defense Units (TRO). Formed out of volunteers at the start of the war, TRO units are filled with untrained, under-motivated men that have been forced to fight for years on end without respite. They are often commanded by entirely degenerate commanders who ‘expend’ the lives of their subordinates at the frontlines ruthlessly. I wrote in October about the ‘drunk, incompetent rogue’ in charge of a territorial defense unit fighting alongside the 102nd around Huliaipole, who apparently sends his hapless troops on endless suicide missions.
Mannerheims Son wrote this about the crisis of the TRO units on December 26:
In his December 26 post, military analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov warned that official silence about Guliapole heralds the approach of the frontlines to the city of Zaporizhzhia. If Russian forces start really threatening that city of 700,000, that’s when I would expect some serious negotiations.
Pokrovsk/Myrnohrad
Now let’s move north, to the twin cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnograd. This is how DeepState shows things as of December 28.
Nationalist MP Roman Kostenko said on December 23 that Ukrainian forces at Myrnohrad are surrounded. Given that Ukrainian soldiers have been saying this for over two months now, he is rather late.
Kostenko told Radio Svoboda (the local branch of Radio Free Europe) that Ukrainian troops in the town are operationally surrounded, but not tactically surrounded. Kostenko loves sophistic arguments. But the meat of what he’s saying is clear:
