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.

map.ukrdailyupdate.com/?lat=48.939375…

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.

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1674778224398864392

t.me/dsns_telegram/…

Russia attacked a bus in Sumy with a drone.

"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."

t.me/prokuraturasum…

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.

Russia is currently bombing Kurakhove into nothingness. They are systematically bombing the entire place into dust. Dropping every weapon they have on it. Glide bombs, tactical cruise missiles, artillery, rockets. They are trying to turn it to dust, to completely erase it. Kurakhove is the anchor to the Ukrainian defensive strategy, it links their eastern line to their southern line. You can think of two concentric circles. There is the outer circle, that is Kurakhove. And the inner circle, that is Kurakhivka. Together they form this anchor.

The Russian advance on Pokrovsk is really bad. Personally, I don’t care about Pokrovsk, I am much more worried of Russia moving south and bypassing by Kurakhove and Pokrovsk, and getting behind the Zaporizhzhia defensive line. I think this is the worst case scenario, and I think it has been Russia’s goal since mid 2022. I do not believe the situation is caused by lack of infantry or lack of ammo or any other excuse being floated around. I believe blame rests squarely on leadership. Both civilian and military. They have shit the bed with endless mistakes, and Russia is taking advantage.

Twitter doesn't allow me to share what I actually think about this video. They chase down a civilian and kill him. You should watch it. Especially if watching an old man die would bother you. Because you should see what the Russians are doing. Video in next tweet.

Every day Russians attack civilians in Kherson and post videos bragging about it. Here are videos from today:

Ukraine is obviously withdrawing to their prepared defensive lines around Pokrovsk. Whether those lines will hold will be seen. But it is obvious that this is what is happening. And it is the correct course of action. The biggest threat to these defenses will be, obviously, bombs. And Ukraine still lacks the air defense to deal with those bombs, so the only realistic course of action is to go after the airfields. Which the west apparently is completely opposed to due to #escalation

Where were the military experts in 2022 when the foundation of the Russian success in Avdiivka area was laid due to the civilian leadership not providing the necessary supplies to the front line units? Where were they using their platform demanding mortar ammo? I saw them talking about Kherson 24/7 and not caring about avdiivka.

Ukraine has been systematically destroying the electrical infrastructure and communications network in the Sudzha area for weeks.





There were many more that we didn't have time to geolocate (which is why we need more geolocators helping us).

Who wins, a group of nomadic tribesman or Russia’s most elite soldiers fully kitted out with all modern gear and with air support? Russia just really isn’t good at war. The only time they can have anything resembling success is when they have extreme overwhelming firepower and even then they will suffer catastrophic casualties and barely win.

I have posted this drone pilot attacking first responders in the past. I'm not going to rehash it. But he is completely full of shit. Also, searching my log of combat damage for 2 seconds led me to this

Imagine waging war against a country that provides critical components of your electrical infrastructure, and then pissing off their allies so much that they ban the export to your country of even more critical components of your electrical infrastructure, and then conscripting the linemen and engineers who maintain your electrical infrastructure. and then targeting the electrical infrastructure in the other country, which makes them hit yours back, but you cant repair things because you need the country you’re at war with to produce the replacement parts for you.

It is insane to me that prop planes were never supplied to Ukraine. People have been so focused on the wrong assets. It has been clear since day 1 that prop planes would be one of the most significant military upgrades Ukraine could get, and if they were provided on Day 1 this war could be very different today. They could have been hunting and destroying recon drones this entire time, denying Russia the ability to plan their missile raids and correct their artillery fire and airstrikes. This would have crippled the Russian military. Instead, we put all of our money into defense, which could not be delivered in the time frames or in the quantities to actually defend ukraine. This failure to provide prop planes is completely infuriating to me. And, even worse, the people who failed to understand how important the prop planes were back then are still in charge of making decisions today. That alone should worry everyone.

It is honestly interesting seeing multiple prominent Russian milbloggers talking about the hopelessness of a Russian victory. I think they are starting to realize they goofed. Sentiments along the lines of “no matter how many resources we push in, the front line barely moves”. “ukrainian and european production is growing faster than ours”. “next year ukraine will have more resources than us”

Compare what Ukraine does to help and rebuild after liberating from Russian occupation to what Russia does once they enter and you can see which country is on the right side of history.

“We opened a Resilience Center in Balakliya.

This step is part of the All-Ukrainian Mental Health Program "Are You Okay?", an initiative of Olena Zelenska.

The project was implemented jointly with the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine and the Coordination Center for Mental Health of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Resilience Centers provide psychosocial support, including group and individual counseling, parenting skills training, social support, crisis intervention, conflict resolution, and support for veterans.

Additionally, the centers offer day care services for children with disabilities, tailored to the needs of each community.

It is also a space for community members to socialize and organize joint events, initiatives and training sessions.

The centers were launched with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).” t.me/synegubov/10324

This is the 243 day of the Russian offensive, in this time they have almost 2900 armored vehicles + artillery destroyed plus 1100 more abandoned. Combined is just under 4000. This is actually an undercount as well, because we don't have enough money to buy all the high res sat images. In the same time period, Ukraine has lost fewer than 900.

I have an idea. Every time someone uses the total number of Russian mortar + 122 + 152 ammo production to 155mm production, they have to donate 1/4 of their salary to the Czech ammo purchase. Does that seem fair? Compare 152 to 155, 122 to 105 and mortars to mortars or stfu and don't say anything at all.