An overview of the Ukrainian frontline changes for the last week.
Legend
Old UA line, is the estimated UA forward line on 2023-09-02
Interactive map can be found here: scribblemaps.com/maps/view/oper…
Kupyansk - Svatove
No noticeable changes, but it's clear RuAF are trying to advance west of Svatove, but without any major success.
There has been no significant changes on the Svatove-Kreminna section. But it seems to me like activity have picked up a bit from the UA side around Kreminna. Possibly due to RU rotations.
Siversk - Bakhmut
No changes except for some minor tweaking just north of Bakhmut
South of Bakhmut there has been some UA success in Klishchiivka. I believe UA forces at the moment are focusing on attrition rather than advancing in this area.
In the area around Donetsk I've made changes around Avdviivka and Novomykhailivka. There are also unconfirmed rumors about UA advances at Opytne.
In the Avdiivka area, UA forces seems to have crossed the highway, this is actually not a new change but it have just slipped past me.
AFU have advanced slightly NE and SE of Novomykhailivka based on geolocated videos.
In the Velyka Novosilka direction, AFU have been advancing in to Novomaiors'ke and according to rumors been able to gain foothold in the north part of the settlement. There has also been a minor advance west of Novodonets'ke.
Robotyne is by far the most active part of the frontline. The last week or so we have seen AFU expand their salient and advance in all directions.
The AFU have made slight advances south of the "river" in the Kam'yans'ke area.
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The AFU are slowly establishing positions on the opposite side of the "river" in Kam'yans'ke, Zaporizhzhia. It's worth mentioning the "river" is probably pretty dry at this point.
This is what it looked like on July 17th when they were first geolocated on that side of the "river".
This morning multiple RU channels reported a UA offensive around Novodonets'ke, Novomaiors'ke and yesterday there were reports about activity around Shevchenko.
My current take on what's going on in Robotyne.
Russian forces are defending the trench system south of the town and are counter attacking towards the town. This is most likely the reason they keep claiming Ukraine have not liberated the town.
Ukrainian forces seem to work a lot with small dismounted infantry groups a the moment, trying to expand the salient south and east.
A small UA recon team was spotted at the town limits of Verbove a few days ago. I think it's unlikely the managed to consolidate position
Until I see something proving the opposite, I will assume RuAF are holding their defensive line successfully west of Verbove.
An overview of units currently involved in fighting in the Robotyne direction.
Unit locations are not exact, nor do they represent the location of the entire unit.
I think it's fair to say he general consensus has been the UA advance during this offensive have been slow. But most analysts also agree there is a big unknown factor and that is the attrition ratio of the two forces fighting.
Over the last few months, RuAF have gradually allocated reserves for the defense of the Robotyne axis. A few weeks ago (a month?), they moved 7th Guards Mountain Air Assault Division from Kherson oblast towards Robotyne .
A brief clarification regarding the defensive lines. @KofmanMichael addressed this in a recent war on the rocks podcast.
On a daily basis I see questions like:
"Where are the defensive lines"
"Which is the first line"
I'll try to address this here.
The blue dashed line represent the most forward observed UA positions while the red represent RU the same for RU.
Orange is trench systems observed via satellite imagery.
Looking at the Robotyne axis, the layered defense looks like this.
The first part of the defenses is the combat zone, almost every tree line here is fortified. It's heavily mined and it consists of mostly smaller trenches and fox holes sometimes just big.