The ground war story is still in Pokrovsk. In the bombardment war, the Russians launched a big strike against the power grid and heating, and daily smaller ones. And the Ukrainians kept to their pace of burning a refinery a day at least.
There is one piece of massive news on the drone front, but it’s an indicator of things to come rather than an actual accomplished fact. If the Ukrainians carry it off, it will change the direction of the war. I am not kidding.
Probably the most notable development from the perspective of general actual news flow was that the Americans in charge took a break from making stupid statements about Ukraine. Not that they suddenly were smart; their attention just seemed to wander away from Ukraine. A Republican flake did tell some shameless lies about Ukraine, which were so mendacious, it was worth a step-by-step take-down.
This review has more than the normal share of unit feed images because the leaves are changing.
The Pokrovsk situation
As always, the kick-off is with the guys on the line in the dirt.
In general, the Russians have infiltrated more than 200 troops into central Pokrovsk, and that was sufficient to disrupt stable Ukrainian control of the center of the city.
This was accompanied by a major Kremlin propaganda push messaging that Pokrovsk was lost, aided and abetted by independent Ukrainian observers and military watchers – including this review – that were quick to point out, accurately, that this is not a new tactic, the ZSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) leadership should have seen this coming. Here’s a link to an article on the situation as it looked on Monday.
By way of background, let’s remember, this is not the first time Russians have pushed foot infantry into close proximity of Pokrovsk.
In July, it was from the south, via the village of Prohres. The 93rd Mech and some Azov units (can’t figure out exactly which) stopped the breach by mid-August and pushed the Russians away from the city, but the Russians were able to consolidate around the villages of Shevchenko and Novopustynka (southwest outskirts). This was apparently 1-200 men. It was either a partial success or a partial failure; the Russians gained some ground, but Ukrainian counterattacks pretty much wiped them out.
Then there was the Dobropillia infiltration, taking place in August-September mostly. This was more of a “cut off Pokrovsk and extend Russian lines” attack than directly at Pokrovsk, but the tactics were the same: Russian infantry finds and exploits gaps in the Ukrainian front, walks 10-20 km (6-12 miles) into the Ukrainian rear area, and then digs in and tries to hold.
This was a bigger incursion – maybe of 200 men initially, followed by as many as 2,000-3,000 later on.
In this case, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky, either because of lessons learned or troop available, reacted forcefully and beefed up Azov 1st Corps and 93rd with a couple of assault infantry regiments and some other units.
This defeated the Russian incursion and wiped it out. Lines in this area are back to where they were in August. The tactics used by the Ukrainians were the same as the previous time: isolate the infiltrators, beat them down with drones and artillery, and then winkle them out with skilled infantry.
Presently, we are, therefore, watching not a unique, but the third substantial Russian push with dismounted infantry in the Pokrovsk sector, which has managed to approach the city.
This most recent attempt is by the same route as in July – from the south. The Ukrainian reaction, tactically, is consistent with the past three times: figure out where the Russians are at, and hunt them down with skilled infantry.
The Ukrainian channels say that probably three assault infantry units are in Pokrovsk, and they have been beefed up with HUR (Ukrainian Defense Intelligence) commandos. I’m not sure of the size of the overall force.
All in all, this is going to come down to which side can keep pushing forces into the battle. You have to give the advantage to the Ukrainians because they have a road. Yes, it’s covered by Russian drones, but it can be transited a lot faster than the terrain the Russians have to move their supplies into Pokrovsk by, which is by foot, and also every meter of that is patrolled by drones. So I can’t say I am cheery and optimistic about Pokrovsk, but past history is past history. Sysrky showed up in the Pokrovsk area on Thursday, which is usually a signal that the sector will get a bit more stuff that always helps with defense in the short term, but does not always help in the medium term.
I just read a report today from the GenShtab (General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine) that said the situation is tough but under control, and ZSU forces are counterattacking. I saw a rah rah Russia report saying Kremlin forces control or at least have chased the Ukrainians out of 70% of the city. Probably the reality is somewhere between those two poles. The video of drones over the battlefield shows some of the thickest swarms of the war. I saw one where there were four FPVs (first-person-view drones) in view at one time, and for every one you see…
Something to remember about “infiltration tactics”
The Ukrainian military journalist Yury Butusov, this week, conveniently, published an account from a Russian soldier, probably a sergeant taken prisoner, about the cost of Russian infiltration tactics.
Per that account, yes, certainly, it is possible to walk through Ukrainian positions, the Ukrainians on the ground are thin, the country is big, there is plenty of cover, it’s usually possible to hear a drone coming and hide.
However, according to the account, if the mission is to walk 15-20 km (9-12 miles), no matter the terrain and how good your field skills are, it’s really difficult to make the walk without drones spotting you and attacking. Per the account, drawn from a pro-Russian channel called Rusishch, a unit’s losses making a long walk into the Ukrainian rear area are two to three times greater than losses suffered during a full-fledged frontal assault. That particular account of a platoon attack tells of 25 corpses seen by a man advancing, and of 80-90% losses.
Pretty much every other account I have seen tells much the same story. Russian infantry units infiltrating are cut to pieces advancing because even if they never face machine guns and barbed wire, walking a dozen kilometers or more under a sky controlled by Ukrainian drones, pretty much guarantees the walker will be attacked.
This is worth bearing in mind when trying to determine how firm the Russian hold of Pokrosk is.
The big – potential – news on Ukrainian drone forces: Madyar says size will double
If it were almost any other source, I would say it wasn’t worth paying attention to, easier to wait and see. But this isn’t the first day, or week, or month, or year of the war, and we have a pretty good picture of which sources are reliable and which commanders deliver.
Robert “Madyar” Brovdi on Thursday put out an announcement on the official channels of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) that he has a green light to double that organization from 15,000 to 30,000 members.
This is the main agency for Ukrainian drone strikes and overwhelmingly the single most lethal fighting force on the battlefield. The USF encompasses pretty much everything that is a robot and that flies and is operated at a level higher than company and up through and including strategic strikes deep into Russia.
They are not responsible for the really complicated, spy-related attacks going after very high-value targets or requiring take-downs of Russian air defenses, or these spiffy boat raids against Novorossiysk, usually that’s the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) or HUR or the navy special ops. There was a great report about SBU drones taking out one of those rare Russian Oreshchnik missiles in Taganrog today. I can’t confirm it, but I believe it. in any case, that was the SBU, not the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF).
But if a drone hit a Russian jeep, or a tank, or a soldier, or a fuel depot near the line, or a train line farther from the line, or even chunks of the Druzhba pipeline next to Belarus, that was the USF. In some ways, if you want a historical parallel, this is the modern Ukrainian version of the German panzer forces: new tech, new commanders, new tactics.
By the USF count – and this is also the unit that hands-down has the best documentation of its battlefield effects, as for practical purposes, its drones record every.single.attack. One-third of all Russian losses in the war, in a given day, week, month, or year, are at the hands of a USF operator.
Brovdi had zero military education when he started the war out as a private. Now he is a major in charge of a service branch the size of a NATO division, and this guy built that organization in a little more than two years. He grew the USF almost totally on donations and grass-roots support. Only in about the last six to nine months has his operation become a real recipient of serious state support.
The line to join the USF is huge. Last time he bumped in size from a brigade to a multi-brigade command, he put out a general advertisement for about 3,000 spots, and filled those slots in about a week. During a bloody war against the Russian army, this organization is turning away volunteers.
True, this is also reasonable: In pretty much any war, it’s a lot easier to get motivated volunteers to kill the enemy than to agree to sit passively and sacrifice. For good or for bad, in this war, the USF are the deadliest killers.
The point is, my perspective, it’s hard to see what would prevent the planned upscale.
Brovdi will get the people, they have the funding, they have a very efficient chain of command, they have systematic recruiting, maintenance works, supply chains are developed, intelligence happens, operations, training, manufacturing, medical, etc. etc. – it’s all there. This isn’t just a functioning organization; it’s the most lethal drone unit on Earth.
That’s a fun sentence to write, but, objectively, it’s just a factual statement.
I read a post of Brovdi’s last month: they have plenty of FPV drones. The bottleneck is just more units in the field, and that needs more pilots and more support people, but those problems, he says, are going to be solved.
If Ukraine’s drone force becomes twice as effective as it is right now – and this is a huge “if” – then my guess is that it must change the course of the war. This is not hyperbole. A USF twice as capable as it is right now, logically, will be the tactical development that forces the Kremlin to acknowledge it cannot gain ground. It could end the war – or become the moment when Ukraine starts taking ground back. This is like the inflection moment we spotted in November 2022, when the Russians visibly ran short of missiles to blast Ukraine’s power grid with, or in October 2022, when the Ukrainians visibly turned Sevastopol port into a warship deathtrap the Black Sea Fleet could no longer use. If Brovdi and the USF deliver, then the war changes.
And again, this would all be pie in the sky, except, this all started with a single four-wheel drive, four guys, and a couple of MAVIC drones. Every time this guy Brovdi has announced he’s upscaling, he’s done it. From platoon to company, to battalion, to regiment, to brigade, to force command, every single time this guy has said: “This is the plan,” he has delivered. He is not paying me to write this. I’ve never met the man. I’m just reporting visible and verifiable results.
If I were a Russian forward unit commander, I would be appalled. I would not be happy if I were a career Ukrainian or NATO general either. If the USF pulls this off, the military profession will change decisively, and no one can stop it.
Here is a news article with more background.
Chemical weapons and the battle of Rusyn Yar
If you’re after the latest news, I suggest you skip this section as it’s from Oct. 9. I saw the reports at that time, but wasn’t sure whether I believed them. Now I do. And since it’s about poison gas and chemical warfare, it’s worth putting the information out there.
On Oct. 9, near a village called Rusyn Yar, Donetsk region, the Russians launched a ground attack, and before they kicked it off, they blew up a section of an unused ammonium pipeline with the idea that the Ukrainians were downwind and the ammonium gas would poison them.
As it turned out, the Ukrainians had gas masks, respirators, and a plan to get out of the way of ammonium gas if the old pipeline got cut, because after all, it had been there for decades. The Russian Ministry of Defense blamed it on “Nazi Ukrainians.”
The next day, the Russians launched an armored attack, but as it turned out, the Ukrainians were ready for it, and so in about five days of fighting, the Russians lost about 60 vehicles, mostly light ones but including a few tanks and APCs, trying to follow up behind their clever gas attack. Those of you familiar with WWI weapons development may recognize the similarity to early uses of gas in that war, right down to the hope that crossing the poison gas red line would restore mobile warfare, but it didn’t.
In that conflict, what followed after the first unsuccessful gas attacks were more attempts to use poison gas.
For more information on Russian chemical warfare in Ukraine, I recommend Chuck Pfarrer’s video on the subject. It’s a solid piece with all sorts of chemical formulae and smoke clouds.
The battle of Selydove, or, also Pokrovsk, but mechanized
The news this week paid a lot of attention to Russians at large in Pokrovsk, but from a wider standpoint, it’s pretty obvious that the infantry infiltration was/is more likely part of a grandiose operation intended to capture the city, rather than the application of a single effective tactic against a specific Ukrainian vulnerability.
Last week saw some armored attacks by the Russians that went nowhere. This week, on Oct. 28, about 10 km (6 miles) southwest of Pokrovsk, near a village called Selydove, the Russians tried again.
This time, it was a column that would have been solid even back in 2023: 29 combat vehicles, primarily infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) like BMP-2s and BMP-3s, supported by infantry and drone cover. There were also at least three tanks and several lighter vehicles. The Russians attacked in foggy and rainy weather, one suspects, with hopes of getting forward without attracting Ukrainian drones.
It didn’t work, it wasn’t foggy or rainy enough, and the tactical story played out in a familiar way. First the columns hit mines, then drones swooped in to target wheels and tracks to stop the vehicles moving with ramming attacks or by dropping drones in front of a vehicle, once stopped, artillery was called on the vehicles and mortars in on the soldiers that had bailed out and taken cover, and then a combination of mortars, FPV drones and bomber drones hunted down the survivors.
Attacking units were elements of the 15th MR Brigade and 30th MR Division. Closest approach to Ukrainian lines was something like 400 meters (437 yards). Russian losses reportedly were 15 vehicles, including three tanks and five abandoned vehicles. Infantry from the 110th mopped up the battlefield and found five vehicles, don’t know type, in working order and abandoned. Ukrainians claimed about 80 Russian KIA (Killed in Action)/WIA (Wounded in Action).
The significance is, obviously, somewhere in the upper echelons of the Russian military, there is someone with a lot of influence who still believes in armored attacks into a drone-dense environment.
Anecdotal information includes the data point that one of the Russians killed, supposedly, based on documents taken from corpses, was one Lieutenant Vasily Marzoev, son of the commander of the 18th Russian Army, Lieutenant General Arkady Marzoev.
Really, it’s just like a shooting gallery for drones
So the Russians are now slapping ERA (explosive reactive armor) blocks, chain fences, and spare metal onto locomotives to try and run the drone gauntlet from Volnovakha to Tokmak.
Other expedients seem to be the 19th-century tactic of sticking one or two flat cars at the front. We can also see that they have the buffer flat car in front of the lead. Another optimistic trick is hanging anti-drone camouflage netting. As some of you may recall, when the Russians opened the rail line in June, the SBU blew up a couple of trains and then turned overwatch duties over to local drone units who, in August, blew up a fuel train and shut the whole line, single track, down.
Repairs were difficult for the Russians because the same drone operators who hit the train could hit the repair crews. The news this week is that the Russians finally cleared the track, reopened the lines, and the Ukrainian drone operators blew up a freight train about 8 km (5 miles) east of where the fuel train that was blown up two months ago was. Map shows a yellow area that is the FPV drone interdiction zone; this is not a good area for Russian railroad development.
Bombardment news
On the Ukrainian side, a busy week with some visible expansion of targeting beyond oil refineries to power stations and power-generating stations. Strikes in Yaroslavl, Orel, and Vladimir brought the war to central Russian cities mostly not experiencing much disruption in the war so far.
- Balashovskaya power station, Rostov region, Oct. 25
- Ukhta (!), near Arctic, one reservoir on fire, Oct. 25
- Serpukhov oil refinery, central Russia, fires, UAVs, Oct. 26
- Luhansk, fuel depot, Luhansk city, SSO drones, Oct. 27
- Luhansk, Fuel train, Starobilsk, SSO drones, Oct. 27
- Bashkorstan, Kachurinsk underground gas storage, giant red glow in sky, Oct. 29
- Kazan’, Mariynskiy Oil Refinery, fires, Oct. 29
- Budenovsk, Krasnodar Krai, oil refinery NS-Oil, sky lit by fire, Oct. 29
- Novospasskoe, Saratov region, oil depot, Oct. 29
- Novobraynskaya power station, 750 KW, Oct. 29
- Orel gas power plant, two explosions, fuel storage and main generator buildings hit and on fire, Oct. 31
- Yaroslavl, oil refinery, substantial fires, Oct. 31
- Vladimirskaya Power station, 750 KW, Oct. 31
On the Russian side, one major strike hit Zaporizhzhia and Ivano-Frankivsk primarily, and Kyiv, Dnipro, and Odesa to a lesser extent.
There was one horrific hit when a missile took out about four floors of a five-story apartment building, with people sleeping inside. It was a big attack with more than 700 weapons; the Ukrainians, by various means, intercepted, decoyed, or shot down about 650, which was considered an excellent day’s air defense fighting. I have read some reports that the numbers would have been better except for a glitch in air defense information transfer in the southern air defense command. That’s not confirmed. Here’s an article on that and a UN investigation into Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine.
Laura Luna, Kirill Dmitriev and NATO
This is really a cheap shot fired into fish in a barrel (sorry, mixed metaphor, couldn’t resist), but this lady richly deserves it. Also, many of you have read fulminations here about pretend NATO contribution numbers bandied about in US media, and the actual verified ones. If you feel like you don’t need to rehash that, then skip to the next section.
On Monday the Kremlin sent their man that studied in the US, Kirill Dmitriev, to Washington DC, officially for “talks,” but really because on Friday the Trump administration sanctioned the heck out of Rosneft and Lukoil. It was the most vicious energy sanctions imposed on Russia by the US since the war began (and had they been imposed at the outset of the war, it would probably be long over, and I would be retired).
Dmitriev’s job was to try and get the Americans to back off or at least cut some exceptions, but clearly, Marco Rubio has Trump’s ear right now, so the White House told Dmitriev to get stuffed. Or more precisely, he was ushered in, there was a short conversation, he left, and after that, Trump made comments about how the Budapest meeting between him and Putin was off and how Trump “didn’t want to waste his time” just jaw-jacking with a Kremlin stooge, er, Putin plenipotentiary. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent even called Dmitriev a “propagandist” on one of the weekend network news talk shows, which was funny.
Dmitriev also appeared on a couple of programs and tried to sell the Kremlin line – “Russia wants peace,” “Ukraine is full of Nazis,” etc. etc.
But also, in a lovely photo op, he met with US Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, 13th District, Florida, in Miami. Supposedly, the pair had “productive and constructive” talks about organizing meetings between congressmen and Duma deputies sometime in the future, peace and trade, and what’s more, Dmitriev shared declassified Russian files on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which Luna said were “interesting.” Later on, Luna told a journalist wondering why she was hobnobbing with the right-hand man of a dictator who started a giant war that has killed more than a million people: “We are not in the Cold War anymore. Stop acting like it.”
Then Dmitriev gave Luna a bouquet of white roses, and photographs were taken and video was recorded. Critics insinuated nasty things about Luna being a Kremlin shill and maybe even chasing after Russian money.
This would have all been just US political news noise this review normally just ignores, but later Luna decided to get her hackles up about all the nasty Twitter traffic about her “meeting with her Kremlin handler” and “kissing up to murderers,” and so on, and she decided the best way to respond was this, and I quote in full:
Just because I’m not a war-shill doesn’t mean I’m wrong. For years, NATO and the EU refused to pay their fair share – and now they want us to bankroll endless foreign wars? Let this be a warning: any politician, anywhere in the world, who demands others bleed while they sit safely behind a podium is unfit for office, including you @markomihkelson. I can tell you Americans have zero interest in dying in a foreign war or a nuclear arms exchange.
So, once again, for the record, for anyone who’s missed it, the narrative that Luna is repeating, that the US is somehow bankrolling Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion for Freedom, that Europe is free-loading – that’s a lie, it’s not true, Luna made that up, there’s no evidence to support it. If you do think it’s true, you’re a moron, and I can prove you’re a moron. Specifically:
- US total defense budget: $886 billion
- US Contributions to NATO Common Budgets: $600 million
- US expenditures in the NATO region/Europe $3.6 billion (will be less in 2025)
- Educated and generous guess of US defense allocations for European defense and security missions: $40-50 billion
In other words, one way to put it, about 4-5% of the entire US defense budget, max, actually gets spent in a way that might deter Russia from invading Europe.
This week, the Americans announced they were pulling the brigade they had been maintaining in Romania back to the States. So that figure, representing the actual value of the US commitment to deterring Russia, will shrink next year.
Another way to put it is, sum up the defense budgets of the Baltic states, the Scandinavian states, and eastern and central Europe, whose armies, air forces, and navies exist for one reason and one reason only – to keep Russian armed forces, and missiles, and drones outside their countries and at a safe distance from their borders. If you figure the sum value of the national defense budgets of the Baltic states, the Scandinavian states, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany – which is very far from all of NATO – then that collective spending on armed force to deter Russia and only Russia, from invading Europe, totals up to about $200 billion/year.
That is between four to five times what the US is spending. It will be more when big German military spending kicks in next year. This is not complicated math.
That figure, around $200 billion, does not include Russian deterrence spending by Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, Italy, Greece, Spain, France and Turkey, all of who have significant to properly sizable defense budgets but for various reasons don’t spend all their defense money on keeping Russia from attacking Europe. This is pulling figures out of the air but, if we theorized about 60% of those countries’ defense spending was going towards Russian deterrence, then that would be another $200 billion not spent by the US, but by Europe, on keeping Russia from attacking NATO.
And lest Ms. Luna or anyone else think that’s irrelevant, if Russia attacked NATO the US would be at war with Russia, the US signed the treaty. Therefore, money spent by anyone to prevent that is money spent to keep the US out of a war with Russia.
Bottom line: Luna says the foreigners are leeches and the Americans pay for everything. That is a bald-faced lie. In fact, the “foreigners” outspend the Americans on deterring Russia by a factor of eight to ten. The US is a member of a European security alliance and by economic weight it should probably be contributing about half of collective alliance spending to collective security. In reality, it’s probably about 10-15%. At best.
That to me sure does look like a parasitical relationship, but in the opposite direction Ms. Luna was talking about. This is not including the blood and treasure sacrificed by the Ukrainians.
I leave it up to you to decide why Congresswoman Luna advanced such an easily verifiable pile of horse hockey.
Mossad, the SBU and Herberts Cukurs
OK, to properly understand this news item it helps to know who Herberts Cukurs was. Born on May 17, 1900 in Liepāja, Courland Governorate, Russian Empire, Cukurs was a Latvian aviator, a pioneering long-distance pilot, and he won great acclaim for international solo flights in the 1930s (Latvia-Gambia and Riga-Tokyo). At the time, he was a national hero comparable to Charles Lindbergh.
Latvia, at the time, was a pretty authoritarian right-wing state. Cukurs (pictured left) was a member of the Arajs Kommando, which, in the early days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, was involved in the mass murder of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust. He pretty much led German hunts for Latvian Jews and became known as the “Butcher of Riga.” It’s reasonable to say that most of the 30,000 Latvian Jews murdered in the Holocaust died thanks to his effort.
In 1965, three Mossad assassins killed Cukurs, a full 20 years after the end of WW2. No judge or jury. Two shots to the head in an ambush. The straight-line distance from Tel Aviv to Montevideo, Uruguay is about 12,000 km (7,457 miles).
Why the history lesson?
Well, on Oct. 25, 2025, in the territory of the Kemerovo region of the Russian Federation, a vehicle was destroyed by an explosion. Behind the wheel was Lieutenant Colonel Veniamin Vladimirovich Mazherin, an officer of the Russian OMON special operations police.
Mazherin, according to multiple accounts and court proceedings in Ukraine, was involved in war crimes committed in the Kyiv region against Ukrainian civilians during Russia’s occupation in 2022. Reportedly, Mazherin led an “anti-terrorist” police unit called the Oberg Group, whose mission was finding and suppressing Ukrainians supporting Ukrainian independence in the city of Bucha.
About 440 Ukrainian civilians were executed in Bucha and the neighboring town of Irpin by Russian forces from February to March 2022. This is not hearsay. The UN has been on the ground, the names of the victims are known, there is video of the murders, and thousands of people – including me – have seen the graves.
The car bomb went off in Russia’s Kemerovo region, deep inside Russia, about 3,300 km (2,051 miles) from Bucha and Irpin. The point is, of course, that when the war ends, it will not end. The SBU and HUR will hunt people complicit in war crimes in this war, to the ends of the Earth, for the rest of their lives.
The war would end sooner if decision-makers in Washington DC understood better that a major conventional war is not a real estate dispute. But then Colonel Mazherin probably thought he was never going to face consequences for his acts.
We all make mistakes.
Dambusters
Over the past weekend, Ukrainian rocket artillery, followed by the USF drone forces, targeted and blew a large hole in sluice gates in a dam in Russia’s battered Belgorod region, which has the unfortunate bad luck to be the very province, in all of the Russian Federation, easiest for Ukrainian military forces to hit with medium-range strikes.
The attacks led off with HIMARS artillery rockets. So, besides the damage, it was a message to whomever might be interested that at this particular point in time, the US is supplying Ukraine with 127mm high-explosive, precision-guided rockets, and the US is at least willing to look the other way if Ukraine’s blows things up in Russia with those weapons.
The objective appears to have been to flood out or at least make life more difficult for Russian troops on the border opposing Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region.
Article about that here.
Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.