Thread by @Playfra0

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About the recent severe worsening of the situation in #Siversk: events that led to this and information from the field.

Unfortunately, in the last 2 weeks, after more than 3 years of effective defense of the sector by Ukrainian units, Russian forces made significant progress in the Siversk direction and in the city itself.

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The main unit commanding the city's defense is the very experienced 54th Mechanized Brigade (with battalion "K-2" drones "Sky Fury").
Because of the gradual prioritization of other directions and the de-prioritization of more dormant and/or stable ones like Siversk, the Ukrainian command has not allocated any big amount of resources to the Brigade in the last months, or even years, choosing to distribute them in more critical sectors instead. As such, because of slow attrition, manpower and other needs of the brigade were not replenished at a sufficient rate, making it slowly become severely understaffed in manpower up to today.

Map from @UAControlMap: google.com/maps/d/u/0/vie…

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Taking advantage of this, recently the Russian command finally reinforced the sector with new brigades, adding them to the ones made up of terrible-quality DPR and LPR forces, which severely impeded any progress on their part in the last years, among other reasons.

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The situation at the front really started to worsen in late August, when Russian forces finally captured the very fortified Kreminna Forest after years of fighting.
From there, they stationed their drone operators just 7 km from Siversk's main supply road, enabling them a "parallel" control over a very long stretch of road and generally worsening supplies.
Then, the Russians exploited this to start pushing in the direction of Dronivka from Serebryanka (bypassed due to its degree of destruction). This area was eventually stabilized by Ukrainian drones, which were holding almost entirely themselves the frontline here, denying Russian forces any consolidation.
Soon after, though, the southern pincer was opened north of Vyimka: the Russians bypassed the strong fortifications there and slowly but surely crept forward up to today, when they have a strong presence in northern Zvanivka, southern Siversk, and Sviato-Pokrovske.
Thus, today we find the city in a >180° defense.

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In all this time, Russian FABs and KABs completely erased Siversk from existence, eventually reaching the possibility of collapsing the basements themselves.
There seem to be 0 civilians left in the city by now, and their evacuation was already impossible months ago.
The reason there aren't many Russian FPV videos of hits on targets in the city is because the city long ceased to serve any logistical hub purpose for the Ukrainians, and everything was moved further back, with the city becoming a place where the military just passed through.
Sometimes in this area it was safer to be at the contact line than in Siversk itself.

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Talking about the current situation at the front, the battle for Siversk's eastern part is a lost battle and has been such since the Russians infiltrated into it the first times, and especially since they consolidated into the high-rise buildings.
Ukrainian forces, though, will still give tough battles for it and render Russian consolidation a very, very tough job, through drone crews situated on the hills overlooking the city and the fact that consolidation in such a destroyed urban area is extremely hard to reach.

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In the 3 years gained from the defense of the city, though, the Ukrainians in the rear haven't been idle and have been building many defenses, especially underground (invisible to satellites). Some date back to 2014 and have been fortified ever since.
So, a Russian breakthrough after the city isn't expected.
In this time the Ukrainians also mined many key places in and around the city (even dugouts and roads east of the city, which played a role in repelling some of the Russian motorcycle assaults), which will further complicate Russian consolidation here.

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In conclusion, Siversk is in a very tough situation right now, and I expect a progressive Russian consolidation up to the Bakhmutivka River in the next days and weeks, which the Ukrainians will try to slow down with everything they have.
I do not expect any "emergency reinforcements" to be sent into this area to stabilize the situation.
A good note to all this is the fact that the Ukrainian command in this area took all the right decisions and avoided something far worse.
More precise information about the tactical situation in this direction will be published in the close future.

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Thank you for reading :)

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