First, Russia launched a few hopeless attacks on Sosnivka (1) during the day on September 10th, and at night they attacked Sosnivka again along with Velyki Prokhody (2). Fortunately, these attacks were hopeless and did little more than briefly slow down everything else.
Russia tried to hold on to the Kharkiv front and sent reinforcements to Kupyansk by road and helicopter. Still, casualties on the western side of the Oskil River were so severe, and the troops were so uncoordinated and chaotic that they had no choice but to begin to withdraw.
To help Russia along with this decision, Ukraine crossed the Siverskyi Donets river at Khotimlya and marched north toward Vovchansk (3).
Simultaneously, forces from the recently liberated Martove and Artemivka marched north (4), and troops from Kupyansk moved north and captured Velykyi Burluk (5).
Russia rapidly abandoned all its strongholds in Kharkiv west of the Oskil River (6), including Kozacha Lopan and Vovchansk.
In doing so, they left behind vast amounts of equipment, including tanks, artillery, arsenals full of ammunition, and the paperwork and documents belonging to officers and an entire headquarters. Not to mention soldiers and officers killed or captured in the retreat.
Further south, Ukraine moved into Izyum (7) and at least superficially seized control over everything west of the Oskil and Siverskyi Donets rivers. However, Ukraine will have to deal with the roving bands of Russians still in the area.
It will likely take ten or more days to clear Izyum fully and even longer to clear all of the newly liberated territories.
I have marked a subset of officially and unofficially liberated towns (the blue and white flag icons).
After Russia abandoned the western side of the Oskil, they began to shell the area, especially around Kupyansk, heavily.
As a result, downtown Kupyansk, where Ukraine had filmed liberation videos (and where they had been in control since September 9th), has been effectively turned to rubble as of September 12th.
There are rumors of Ukraine controlling areas east of the Oskil river, but all of my sources have told me they know nothing about this. I have not seen any evidence, and I believe it is a baseless rumor.
It is likely that Ukrainian special forces are operating on that side of the river, perhaps even recon. Still, I have not seen evidence of regular Ukrainian troops crossing the river.
On September 12th, Russia ordered the evacuation of the border towns of Nekhoteevka (8) and Zhuravleva (9). I believe they are doing this because they intend to build artillery positions in these locations to shell the Kharkiv area.
As you see on the map, this area, along with Sereda, a bit to the east, are the closest areas of Russia to Kharkiv city. Zhuravleva is 36km from downtown Kharkiv.
One final note about the Kharkiv area, yesterday, Ukraine used drones and artillery to destroy a mortar position near the Russian town of Logachevka (10) on the 12K-33 highway (road?).
They destroyed three 2S12 Sani 120mm heavy mortars and three 2F510 mortar transport trucks. Russia claims Ukraine targeted and killed local people. If true, maybe the locals should not have been manning heavy mortars and shelling Ukrainian towns.
Ukraine has been building and establishing bridgeheads over the Siverskyi Donets river in the Slovyansk and Siversk areas.
On the 12th, Ukraine liberated Svyatohirsk (11), and on the 10th and 11th, they crossed the river near Zakitne and assaulted Yampil (13) and captured Bilohorivka (14), and crossed the river near this area (15).
Russia has been continuously counterattacking Bilohorivka, trying to dislodge Ukraine (16). Unfortunately for Russia, the forces in this area have not been combat ineffective for many weeks and likely do not have the power to push Ukraine away.
Ukraine now controls areas near Svyatohirsk, Satryi Saltiv, Ozerna, Zakitne, and Bilohorivka. Five significant crossing points. Ukrainian engineers have built strong enough crossings to allow the transfer of tanks and heavy equipment.
For Russia, the crossing near Bilohorivka is the most threatening because it is behind their main defensive line near Lyman and Yampil and threatens an attack on the much more critical Kreminna (17).
On September 12th, I heard that the intensity of the shelling and fighting around Bakhmut had lessened compared to previous days.
In Soledar, Russia claims to have captured a block of buildings adjacent to the Knauf Gips factory. I marked this area on the map. It represents the total net gain of the Russian position in Soledar since August 23rd.
There is minor skirmishing on the eastern outskirts of the town and in Bakhmutske to the south, although Russia seems to be focusing on moving west (18).
In Bakhmut, Russians have reached the industrial zone in the east after having abandoned this position and withdrawn several weeks ago. There is fighting near the Ceramic factory (19).
I have the factory marked as the easternmost Ukrainian fortification marker in the city. The map may exaggerate the extent of battle in the city's south (20).
Around Vesela Dolyna, several weeks ago, I had heard that the fighting was primarily near the electric substation. Still, given that so much time has passed, I had assumed the action migrated either north or west.
Fortunately, I was mistaken, as the Russian forces triumphantly declared they had begun fighting near the substation on September 12th (21). As if this were progress. Progress in the sense that nothing has changed since August 2nd.
There is ongoing fighting around Zaitseve (22). I do not have any particular knowledge about this town, but someone in the area told me that my map gives Russia too much credit and that they have made much less progress than depicted. And I show them making almost no progress.
Russia is pushing toward Odradivka (23), Mykolaivka Druha (24) and Kurdymivka (25). The latter two are heavily fortified towns and will be very difficult to attack. It is unknown to me how much progress Russia has made in these areas.
Russia claimed to have captured the Mayorsk train station (26), but there is still fighting in the area. I do not know if the fighting is still at or north of the train station.
On September 11th, Ukraine stated they repelled a Russian attack near Ozeryanivka (27). An odd statement. I do not know how to interpret it. I marked some of the ground as contested. Very confusing.
On the same day, Ukraine stated that they repelled an attack on Novobakhmutivka (28), which is now labeled contested. In light of the recent news that Ukraine liberated all or most of Novoselivka, you could charitably say Ukraine is expanding its area of control south of New York
Or perhaps little has changed, and the Ukrainian General Staff is taking too many liberties with their language. Unfortunately, I have not been able to confirm any news about this area.
Russia desires to capture Avdiivka. It is one of the primary objectives of the war. Given the past few days' events in Kharkiv and what is happening in Kherson, you would think Russia may abandon its attack on Avdiivka and maybe reposition these troops to more essential areas.
But no, they are doubling down on their attack.
They are attacking Krasnohorivka (29), Avdiivka (30), Pisky (32), and Marinka (35) and in the directions of Vodyane (31) and Pervomaiske (33). Ukraine launched a failed counterattack near Pisky (34).
South of Donetsk, on September 12th, Russia attacked Novomykhailivka (36). This attack in itself is not notable because Russia has been attacking this town on an almost daily basis. However, an (unconfirmed) report that Ukraine rebuffed this attack with a counterattack is notable
Supposedly Ukraine pushed the Russians back a bit, then opened up a massive artillery barrage.
According to Russian reports, Ukraine is building up forces in Krasnohorivka (A), Vuhledar (B), Prechystivka (C ), Hulyaipole (D), Orikhiv (E), and Stepnohirsk (F). If true, the goal of these buildups would be to disguise the intent of any future Ukrainian offensive.
They want Russia to believe they could attack anywhere, so Russia does not know which attack may be a feint or a genuine offensive. Of course, it could be that all of these attacks are a feint, and the actual attack could be somewhere else entirely. Or there may not be any attack
Last night there were reports of significant fighting near Vasylivka (G). I believe this was most likely a large artillery strike.
On September 11th, Russia launched a massive missile strike on Ukraine's electrical infrastructure, targeting four power plants. This strike did significant damage to Ukraine's electrical infrastructure.
This is all I have. I do not have enough information about Kherson to talk about it at the moment.
I just posted a map update, and many parts of the update have been written about by others already. But one interesting tidbit is the advance of Ukraine in Bilohorivka.
Here you see a Russian FPV Drone strike hitting a Ukrainian trench. You see that the trench crosses a road and has a hook shape. The trench is of relatively new construction, and cannot be seen on google map, nor other public high resolution images of the area. However, on google earth you can see the relative shape of the terrain (the Z axis is magnified 300% to exaggerate terrain features to make them easier to see. You can see that the trench runs along the crest of a hill. You can see the road it crosses, which is slightly lower than the ridge of the hill, on the reverse slope.
On sentinel, which is 10 meter resolution (a very low resolution image with few details), you can see the hook shape of this trench. This image is from October 24th, 2024, which is about 2 weeks ago.
The war in Ukraine took a turn in June of 2023 when Ukraine launched a counter-offensive south in an attempt to break through toward Tokmak. This decision has influenced every event that has followed, leading to disastrous consequences for Ukraine. I will not go into depth about the offensive south, but in short, Ukraine burned through its ammo stockpile and 12 of its best brigades. The offensive badly weakened these brigades and eliminated Ukraine's already limited flexibility regarding rotating troops and responding to threats.
Immediately upon the conclusion of this offensive, Russia launched a large offensive on Avdiivka and Novomykhailivka. Avdiivka is a small suburb northwest of Donetsk city, and Novomykhailivka is a small village south of Donetsk. Russia's ultimate goal was to break through to the city of Kurakhove, which is a small city west of Donetsk and is the westernmost significant defensive position constructed by Ukraine on the Donetsk front. In essence, Russia's goal was to break through the Donetsk defensive line and force Ukraine to defend weakly defended territory.
Ukraine's Donetsk defensive line was well-constructed and relatively strong. As such, it required fewer soldiers to successfully defend and more soldiers to successfully assault. This created a defensive advantage for Ukraine, which helped ease its relative manpower limitations compared to Russia. Once Ukraine is removed from these strong defensive lines, it requires more men to defend the same amount of area and also fewer men to successfully assault, which gives Russia the advantage due to its superior manpower.
To succeed, Russia would have to create a large manpower advantage in a localized area to break through the hardened defensive lines. Once broken, Russia could then splinter its manpower into many smaller attacks and attack many places simultaneously.
I could review the timeline and list the settlements attacked, and my initial draft of this post included this information. But instead, I will cut to the chase. After capturing Aviivka, Russia simultaneously attacked many locations along the entire eastern front. At first, Ukraine could withstand the attacks, but with each lost position, Ukraine became increasingly weaker. Finally, the fall of Ocheretyne, the next railway stop northwest of Avdiivka, fell. This loss opened the floodgates that allowed Russia to flow across the Donbas and capture many settlements in a short time.
Ukraine has now reached a point where it has insufficient manpower to mount a proper defense. Even after shortening the length of its defensive line to increase the density of its troops, it still lacks the strength to stop the Russian advance.
Russians have effectively broken through the line of defense that was behind Vuhledar by getting into the middle of Bohoyavlenka. This defense line I was hoping could last at least 2-3 months, but was lost in 1. Largely due to extremely heavy bombing and horribly insufficient preparation by ukriane.
In essence, Ukraine spent 2 years defending their forward positions to buy time, and used that time doing nothing to prepare the next line of defense.
There really is no excuse Ukraine has for this failure. You have to point the finger at Zelensky. He is personally responsible for this. It was his job to defend Ukraine. You cannot blame "western partners" for failing to make the most basic defenses in your most critical areas.
Yesterday a bunch of Russian trolls were trying to tell me Russia doesn’t strike schools, so here is an example of such a thing. It is the most memorable strike to me, the videos of wounded educators being pulled out of the destroyed school is etched into my memory.
"According to the investigation, on October 5, 2024, at around 3:30 p.m., using methods of warfare prohibited by international law, the enemy drone attacked a bus traveling through the territory of the Rychkiv community of the Sumy district.
As a result of the attack of the occupiers, three passengers were injured - a 65-year-old man and 54-year-old and 63-year-old women."
I am not convinced Russians actually control the area west of the canal in Chasiv Yar. We’ve been geolocating Russians there for a while, if you scroll back through our map you can see the geolocations and you can see the videos. You can see what the area looks like.
That area is not conducive to being controlled by anyone, Ukraine has thick drone coverage, and anyone who passes through the area has a very high chance of dying. Furthermore, the structures are completely destroyed and there arent many suitable places for defense.
I doubt anyone controls this area. I doubt anyone could control the area no matter how much they wanted to or how many resources they put into it.