Sources like warspotting and lostwar withhold losses from their counts when they are not clearly identifiable. Ukraine has pivoted to using heavy bomber drones to destroy vehicles, and posts tremendous numbers of losses per day using this method.

https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1876534886313705788

Due to thermals and top down view these losses are only very rarely counted. And when they are counted, it can be many months later when alternate footage appears.

THE UKRAINIAN DRONE HAS TWO SHOTGUNS. im giggling

Kurt Company says they have killed 51 and wounded 57 Russians this month. These guys are situated near Kurdyumivka, and are repelling Russian assaults across the Severskyi Donets canal. I have personally seen about 25 of those 51 killed on video, and I've geolocated around 15.
Ukrainian positions in this area are very well designed, which contribute substantially to their ability to defend. We've seen Ukrainian defenses in other areas, often superior positions, with vastly inferior design and construction fall within minutes or hours.

We have significant map updates. West of Velyka Novosilka the Russians have advanced across two farm fields.
Link: map.ukrdailyupdate.com/?lat=47.826774…

btw, a huge fraction of the damage we see done every day is not done by fpv drones, it is done by drone dropped bombs. In particular, the heavy bombers like vampire, kazhan, and nemesis. The r18 is getting increasingly popular. And we see more avengers but those are very rare. avenger is a fixed wing bomber that carriers, i think, 5.5kg payload. most commonly the loadout is either 2-4 medium sized bombs or like 5-8 smaller bombs that it drops as a carpet bombing type thing. It is hard to aim because it is a level bomber. A dive bomber would be better

Ukraine has two extremely toxic problems that should have been addressed a long time ago, but never were.

First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue. Second, there is this idea that once mobilized, you can no longer contribute to the economy. This is asinine. Of course they can. There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained.

For the people who somehow do not understand Russia’s motivations:

Putin got sad he wasn’t allowed to have a puppet state in Ukraine, so he threatened them to remind the world how powerful Russia is.

It is that simple. Putin is a low IQ thug. Ironically, through attacking Ukraine, the world has seen how weak Russia is, and as a result Putin has lost sway over basically everything he ever cared about. Especially Syria.

I believe that the persmision to shoot ATACMs into Russia and the 24 billion dollar aid package for next year both either came from Trump as his idea or were Biden's idea with Trump's blessing. I also think the escalation that Putin has been attempting to achieve over the past 2 weeks is coming as a result of some backchannel negotiation that went sour between himself and Trump.

The news coming from the Velyka Novosilka area is very bad. There is no way to sugar coat it, the area has reached crisis and needs immediate intervention. In short, Velyka Novosilka is the anchor of the southern defensive line. The line that runs from the Dnipro river to the east towards Donetsk. The Zaporizhzhia line. This west to east defensive line effectively ends in Velyka Novosilka. (note my map hasn't updated for the changes today)

Russia paying soldiers lump sums is not a method to get people to join the military, paying them is a way to make people not care about how many soldiers die. Everyone knows soldiers are dying in huge numbers. But the money makes people think it is a gamble, not a tragedy. Nobody cares about a guy who signed up for quick money and died. They see it as quick easy money coming with huge risks and shrug. It is their own fault for joining.

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