This week saw some impressive Ukrainian strikes deep in Russia auguring for more and more damaging in the future. The Battle of Pokrovsk is still in progress and the information is still mixed and often contradictory. There is no Ukrainian collapse but there certainly is no relief of Russian pressure.
I’ll open with a section on Ukrainian strike strategy, but not disrespect to the guys on the front, it’s just an interesting development courtesy the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) needed flagging: The Ukrainians just did another one of those “first-time-in-military-history” things.
Power stations hit by precision-guided, highly lethal, long-range “Ukrainian drone debris”
If you are interested in military history then take a look at this, because you lived long enough to be an eyewitness:
“For the first time since the Soviet Union invaded Finland that Winter is not a Russian ally.”
I refer of course to Ukraine’s bombardment campaign against Russia, mostly by kamikaze drone. The past three months saw the Ukrainians go after Russian oil refineries and oil exports. That campaign is still in progress. But for about the past three weeks, the Ukrainians widened their targeting to the Russian power grid, and particularly Russian power substations and the transformers inside them.
This isn’t to imply transformer stations are the new primary target. It is to state they are another primary target. The already-damaging bombardment campaign, is expanding. Here are the strike notes for the week:
133. Orel gas power plant, two explosions, reportedly Neptune missiles, fuel storage and main generator buildings hit and on fire – 31.10
134. Yaroslavl, oil refinery, substantial fires, – 31.10
135. Vladimirskaya Power substation station, two hits, no AAA, nets didn’t help, big fires, 750 kV – 31.10
136. Koltsevaya oil hub, Moscow Oblast, pumps gasoline, aviation fuel there + Ryazan and Nizhnegorod, HUR operation, big explosion, shut down – 01.11
137.Tuapse oil sea terminal, direct hit to pier number one, drones – 02.11
138.Zheleznegorsk power transmission station, Kursk Oblast, big flashes – 02.11
139. Alechevsk city, Luhansk, power transmission station, possibly HIMARS, explosions and fire – 02.11
140. Orel, city heating plant, drones, no AAA, fires burning – 02.11
141. Usman power transmission station, Lipets Oblast, 10KW – 02.11
142. Oil refinery, Shakhtersk, Donetsk region – 02.11
143. Oil refinery, one of the ones in Saratov, cracking tower hit – 03.11
144. Vladimirskaya substation, on fire – 04.11
145. Oryel heating plant, on fire – 04.11
146. Yaroslavl Oblast, two oil transfer stations hit – 04.11
147. Volgorechensk, Kostroma thermal plant, supports Moscow, multiple hits, fires, 730 km – 05.11
148. Fuel depot, Bitumne, near Simferopol, Crimea – 05.11
149.Volgograd, Volgogradneftepererabotka, Lukoil oil refinery, fire reaching to the clouds – 05.11
150. Bashkortostan, Sterlitamak oil refinery – 05.11
151. Crimea, Hvardiiska/Bitumne, fuel storage site, possibly pipelines, SSO (special forces), FP-2 drones – 06.11
So as you can see the Ukrainians are keeping busy. If you want to look closely at how the Ukrainians are going after the Russian power grid, then there was Thursday, when the Ukrainians hit and set afire the Kostroma power plant, a conventionally fired facility delivering power to the Moscow region. It is the biggest non-nuclear power plant in the Russian Federation.
The main nuclear power plant feeding electricity to Moscow is the Kalinin Nuclear Power Station to the northwest of the capital.
A day prior to the Kostroma attack, Ukrainian drones hit and damaged a power substation called the Vladimirskaya power substation, to the east of Moscow, twice in the past nine days. Why there? Because, that is where the power lines from the Kostroma and Kalinin plants intersect as they carry electricity to the Russian capital. It is safe bet, even though the Ukrainians already went after the Vladimirskaya substation three times, they will do so again.
We are eyewitnesses to a systemic, long-term, strategic Ukrainian effort to force blackouts on the Moscow power grid, keep them coming, and undermine that grid’s capacity to run industry and heat homes.
If you are a Russian strategic planner contemplating the future rationally, well, it’s not optimistic. It’s early November 2025 and it’s very difficult to dispute that:
- Russia’s frayed air defenses aren’t improving, they’re getting worse.
- The Ukrainians are getting better at hitting things inside Russia.
- The Ukrainians are producing more and more long-range drones, production is rising.
- The aircraft produced are becoming more capable – longer range, bigger warheads, better resistance to jamming.
- It is a basic reality of air defense that the more incoming aircraft, the more difficult the defense
- You can find even Russian propagandists complaining “it’s not fair” they have to defend the world’s biggest air space. Whatever strike capacity Ukraine has is made more effective by the size of Russia.
- Winter is coming to Russia. The Kremlin can’t stop it.
It’s not clear that the Ukrainians will succeed with this campaign, Russia is an authoritarian state and a powerful country with a lot of resources. It will take a lot of destroying to make the Russian population sick and tired of power outages and cold apartments, and do something about it.
But I remember four years ago, and I would say remember Napoleon now. The colder the Winter, the more effective Ukraine’s bombardment campaign against Russia.
Like in Finland. Image of some Finnish ski troops and combat reindeer:
The Battle of Pokrovsk revisted, rehashed and reviewed one more time again
The short version of this section is “fighting continuing and situation unclear.” If you want more detail well there was plenty – just none of it conclusive.
Probably the wisest starting point for this section is to bear in mind that Pokrovsk has been in danger of “falling” since summer, so although there are possible trends, based on past fighting, no matter how the fighting goes, it’s a bad bet to expect a dramatic and quick change of the situation.
Honestly, I can’t put together a really solid picture of the situation there, and that’s with all my sources and due diligence. So the second starting point is, obviously, anyone saying they know what’s going on in Pokrovsk, for sure, in my mind that person is suspect. Not the AFU, not the Kremlin, not the soldiers, not the OSINTers, no one knows for sure. The honest ones will tell you they’re not sure.
OK, first the Kremlin view of developments this week, the Ukrainians are fully surrounded and doomed. On Oct. 29 Putin, wearing a military uniform for the TV cameras, said Ukrainian forces were “surrounded and blocked” in Pokrovsk, and proposed a local ceasefire to allow foreign and Ukrainian journalists to go into the city via “safe corridors” and for Kyiv to “decide the fate” of its troops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no reporters took him up on the invite.
On the AFU side, on Tuesday Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky issued a statement saying no, AFU forces in and around the city aren’t surrounded, supply is still getting in, counterattacks are taking place, and that although the situation is difficult, AFU forces are holding their ground and hurting the enemy badly. Special forces and assault troops are in the city and according to him and other sources they are clearing areas of Russians.
On Nov. 4 and 5, Syrsky was in the Pokrovsk sector meeting with commanders, and Maj. Robert Brovdi, commander of the unmanned systems forces (USF) was with him. This is, I assess, a reliable indicator of more strike drone units heading to the sector. We have seen mobile drone strike units stop major Russian assaults in the past, most recently at Dobropillya (see section below)
There was a flurry of news on Oct. 31-Nov. 1 when images and reports and even video appeared of the Ukrainian HUR using both of its Blackhawk helicopters to chopper in teams from the assault group Timur, which specializes in short-range firefights and room-clearing. Even HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov surfaced in video inside a headquarters. Russian propaganda video quickly followed showing the HUR operators supposedly coming under artillery fire, but for me it wasn’t credible.
No one told me this but it’s pretty obvious why the Ukrainians decided to go for a cool air assault operation, and it wasn’t to gain some cool tactical edge, it was because the Russians have the road into Pokrovsk thoroughly covered with drones and artillery.
Besides the Timur group you can find reports of other sneak-deaky commandos including Alpha from the SBU, 3rd Regiment from the SSO now operating in the north and west of the city. These are all great units and absolutely not guys you want to be up against in a firefight, as they will kill you.
But first thing, any army that is using commandos to shore up a conventional defensive battle is an army that is not doing well. Second, Russia supposedly has 80,000-100,000 troops concentrated in the Pokrovsk sector. Report after report says the Russian tactic is three-man groups advancing on foot 3-5 km, and then trying to dig in while the drones try to hunt them down. One brigade said it counted 300-plus Russians moving into its sector in a single day. Most were hit but not all.
An offensive of that scale is not stopped by several dozen assault rifles carried by men wearing facial hair, Oakley shades, 5.11 cargo pants and Salomon tactical boots. It’s stopped by massed drones, mines and artillery in industrial quantity.
The OSINT community, of which arguably this review is a member, seems to feel that the Russians are in the south of the city, but not in great strength, the Ukrainians are in the north of the city, in similar strength, and the middle of the city is a big no man’s land where infantry patrols are hunting each other, along with drones hunting the infantry and the drones. Here’s a read-out from an OSINTer called OK-Gora, from Friday:
“The enemy was able to slip into the former dairy factory, located beyond the eastern outskirts of the city. It is being hit by drones. However, almost the entire eastern part of the city, including Rig and Hnativka, is under enemy control. Additionally, there is information that the enemy was able to enter Rivne, but there is no confirmation of this… we can say that 92% of the city is either under the enemy or in a gray zone.”
There is substantial comment from the fighters themselves. On Wednesday the unofficial 25th Airborne Brigade (this is the Ukrainian paratroops) Telegram channel said: “Only the northeastern part of the city is under confident control. It is premature to talk about full control of the city by the Russians. Everything else above the railway is chaos and a gray area, where no one knows who controls what. The most difficult situation is north of Myrnohrad in Rodynske and Chervonyi Lyman, where battles are taking place for control of the only road to the city through the famous crossroads south of Rodynske… Myrnohrad itself will indeed most likely be abandoned due to the threat of encirclement.”
On Thursday, the 33rd Assault Infantry Regiment – this is one of those attack units trained and equipped for urban fighting, which Gen. Syrsky brought in especially for urban combat in Pokrovsk, said the fighting was tough but they are sticking it to the Russians:
”The enemy is trying to take advantage of the weather conditions. The enemy is using the fog to try to advance further. But our storm troops have dug in, set up flanks, and together with special forces are clearing the city… under enemy KABs, artillery and drones. The occupiers do not spare resources and simply demolish Pokrovsk buildings, trying to move forward.”
Also on Thursday video and reports surfaced linked to 425th Assault Infantry Regiment recording a patrol that made it way all the way to Pokrovsk city hall, killed and wounded Russians along the way, and hung a Ukrainian flag outside the building. I deduce that 155th Mechanized Brigade – these are the guys that trained in France – supported with at least artillery, and possibly drones. This is from the AFU point of view praiseworthy and excellent recon, but the main point is those guys then left. It’s pretty obvious a basic Ukrainian problem is that even if it has infantry units in Pokrovsk capable of clearing buildings, finding men to hold the buildings it clears, is a problem.
We know that the 14th Chervona Kalyna Brigade, a unit with a good fighting reputation, is in Pokrovsk and operated a BTR-4E in at least one counterattack; the idea was drive to where the Russians had just gone to ground and chew them up with 30mm cannon. About the same time, a video appeared of Russians unloading a pickup truck in Pokrovsk, supposedly showing that in some places they had decided it was safe enough to risk a vehicle.
Also spotted in Pokrovsk fighting are elements of 79th Air Assault Brigade and 4th National Guard Rubizh Brigade; both are veteran units. I have read an unconfirmed report that the 79th near Pokrovsk: burned a column of Russian armored vehicles that were storming Myrnohrad, and then while clearing Rodnynske burned another column of vehicles. It probably happened but I have no idea if it was this week. Image of a 4th Brigade drone pilot and his interesting haircut.
The 41st Brigade officer/milblogger Kyrylo Sazonov described the fighting this way:
“The city is now, except for a small sector in the north and south, practically no one’s. One big gray zone. A layered pie of passages, areas under fire, positions of our forces and the enemy. There’s no front line, no controlled sectors, no logic. The enemy was actively infiltrating our rear and establishing localized fortified points… Someone is sitting on the third floor, someone in the building next door, someone in the basement. And it’s not a given that they’re all friendly. Our forces and enemy drones are flying around the city, but the main focus is on logistics. They’re trying to cut off our supplies at any cost, and we’re busy doing the same.”
Overall the trend of the Ukrainian reporting seems to be that they feel like that they have the advantage in urban fighting over an extensive area because of much better-trained infantry and more and denser drones.
That I would generally agree with, but, the way I see it, it will come down to which side can feed more effective firepower into that fight. Even excellent infantry will eventually take enough casualties in urban fighting so that it can’t fight any more. So probably this is not the last section this review will devote to Pokrovsk.
Sacked over the Dobropillya sack
It is illuminating to note that this week reports originating in Russia surfaced that the Kremlin sacked the commander of the 51st Combined Arms Army Lt. Gen. Sergey Milchakov, and the commander of 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade Maj. Gen. Sergey Naimushin for “failures in the Dobropillya direction,” meaning they were in charge of a major offensive operation just to the north of Pokrovsk in August and September.
The Ukrainians defeated it solidly by bringing up reserves, cutting the Russian penetration into several encirclements, and then wiping out each sack of Russian troops one by one.
I think this is worth remembering when trying to analyze the Pokrovsk battle: sometimes, these Russian infiltration tactics fail badly and on a large scale. Obviously the Kremlin gets pretty mad when that happens.
Russian reinforcements vs. Dobropillya
The Ukrainians are reporting the Russians haven’t given up on Dobropillya and have committed the following to the “offensive” there: 132nd (I assume refurbished) and 114th Motor Rifle Brigades, 88th Infantry (?) Regiment, 336th Naval Infantry Brigade, and elements of 1st, 5th, 39th and110th Motor Rifle Brigades. I’m not at all sure what that will work out to on the ground, but, at minimum, news of those reserves having been committed is more evidence the Kremlin is still fixated on Pokrovsk.
From the Ukrainian point of view, more and more, the Ukrainian strategy at Pokrovsk is resembling the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Those of you who read history may remember that the German strategy at Verdun did indeed bleed the French army close to white, but, it also gutted the German army with casualties that could not be replaced.
Tuapse got smacked on Saturday
Ukrainian forces hit Tuapse, in Krasnodar Krai, again. The target was Rosneft’s oil terminal and refinery infrastructure. Based on reports and videos, at least 12 long-range kamikaze drones launched by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) scored 5-7 direct hits on the oil terminal. This is the main means by which Russian oil is exported by the Black Sea. The first thing that got hit, it seems, was a Pantsir air defense system.
Next oil loading piers, berths, pipelines, and port buildings were hit and set on fire. At least four tankers tied up at the terminal were damaged or set ablaze. Flags were Panama, Liberia, Bahamas and Russia. All were shadow fleet tankers. Three were loaded or loading. Also a small tugboat-type ship was destroyed.
Russian authorities said “falling debris” damaged two foreign civilian ships and infrastructure but claimed no injuries. Besides the typically more independent sources (Ukrainian military statements, milbloggers and Russian social media, aka “people’s correspondents”), there were two Turkish ships in the harbor whose crews video-recorded portions of the strikes. Afterwards satellites showed big fires burning and a big oil slick in the harbor. And, for the first time probably in decades, the oil terminal had no customers, all the tankers were gone and none were waiting to hook up to take aboard product.
Bloomberg on Thursday confirmed the strikes had shut the terminal down full stop, major exports of Russian oil for the time being are no longer possible via the Black Sea. Also, the oil refinery in Tuapse that produces things like diesel or gasoline for export, is shut down as well.
This was not the first strike on Tuapse but certainly the most damaging. The implication is much the same as with the transformer stations: the really bad news for the Russians is that it seems like there’s not much the Russians can do to prevent the Ukrainians from repeating a strike like this again, only next time it is likely to be more powerful.
Donetsk and Storm Shadows
In a textbook case of success always having a huge family, and failure is always an orphan, Ukraine’s Army General Staff, Special Operations Forces, SBU, and Unmanned Systems Forces all reported that they blew sky high a major warehouse containing hundreds of Russian Shahed drones and component, in the occupied Donetsk region city of Avdiivka. It also was a major launch site of Shahed attacks on Ukraine.
Most reports say it was a mixed missile-drone strike. The trend of information from both sides is that the drones were FP-2 drones. This is a pusher-prop winged aircraft with an enhanced warhead with 105 kg of explosives. The trade-off is range up to 200 km. Less-confirmed but far from contradicted anywhere are reports the missiles were British Storm Shadows. This is a NATO-standard missile dropped from an airplane and designed to punch into underground bunkers and blow them up, or sink warships.
According to news reports this week the UK handed over a batch to Ukraine recently. However, it is not impossible the Ukrainians used surface-to-surface missiles of some kind; the Missile Forces also participated in the attack.
The target was a pair of launch ramps for Shahed drones built by Russian forces on the edge of Donetsk airport. Adjacent was a storage site for assembled drones and, it seems quite clear, a stock of fuel and warheads for the drones. Figures of how much was there are ranging from about 150 Shahed drones to 3,000. According to official claims, some number of Russian cruise missiles also were at the site, as well as hundreds of other munitions.
It seems like about a half dozen drones and a smaller number of missiles executed the strike. Ukrainian milbloggers, probably fed the data by Ukrainian military intelligence, had pinpointed the site back September. There was even griping that if Ukraine knows where the Shahed launch sites are, why isn’t Ukraine hitting them? One theory this week was, the idea was to let the Russians fill up the ammo dump.
The best-confirmed evidence of the attack’s success was a terrific explosion that, in a lot of videos, looked like a nuclear detonation with a circular white-orange blast reaching the clouds, visible shock waves spreading from it, and then the sound. The explosion was recorded from several directions so it’s probable that particular detonation was the main mass of whatever might explode – fuel, warheads, other munitions – went up all at once.
The SSO published video of drones homing in on the target area, with 9 or 10 fires already in progress. Maj. Robert Brovdi the commander of the Drone Forces said 90 percent of the kamikaze aircraft got through. Across the Ukrainian sources the claims are: Ammunition dump totally destroyed, fuel dump totally destroyed, launch ramps and equipment destroyed, power lines and support buildings damaged, 1,000 Shaheds destroyed, 1,500 munitions (est.) destroyed.
Although those numbers cannot be exact, this is one of the best-documented attacks the Ukrainians have carried out against Russian strike capacity so far in the war. There are drone videos, general confirmation in social media and satellite overflights all confirming that the AFU flattened a Shahed launch site by the Donetsk airport. Also, basically, Russian and DPR media haven’t even noticed; according to them All Quiet in Avdiivka. Silence like that is usually an excellent indicator of a AFU success.
More or less long-range strikes in 2026?
Speaking of Ukrainian strike capacity, according to Interfax, citing government sources, by 2026, Ukraine’s long-range capabilities will cost someone over $35 billion, while the entire industry could earn $60 billion.
The thinking in Kyiv is that bombarding Russia is a winning strategy but it needs to be upscaled, and on its own or even taking Western assistance into account, that isn’t enough money to turn the drone strikes of 10-15 aircraft that put a refinery off-line for a week or a month, into repeated strikes by dozens of aircraft that destroy the refinery for good.
The solution, according to Interfax, is to legalize export of Ukrainian long-range drones to NATO allies, who definitely need them and who haven’t even begun developing them, and even if they did they would be orders of magnitude more expensive than the Ukrainian drones and not combat-tested.
According to the report, the government has decided that is an excellent way forward and so next year we will see substantial production of strike drones not just to hit Russia and actually blow things up, but drones to sit in Europe, to convince Russia not to attack Europe.
Recently I’ve had the good luck to visit a ground drone factory and a drone battery factory, and management at both those places say that for their company an infusion of Western money would allow them to expand production for and cut costs to the AFU, massively. This is the business owner talking to me; so input on the microeconomic level.
SAMP/T vs. Patriot
According to The Chief of the Defense Staff (Chef d’état-major des armées, or CEMA) of the French Armed Forces, Fabien Mandon, the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air defense missile systems deployed in Ukraine are capable of intercepting upgraded Russian ballistic missile attacks, a task with which the US Patriot systems are struggling. The basic problem for the Ukrainian air defenses is that although the American Patriot is designed to intercept an incoming ballistic missile along some trajectories, it has trouble when the missile changes its trajectory, or flies at changing speeds.
The latest ballistic missiles fired by Russia at Ukraine have been upgraded to do just that. According to Mandon, the SAMP/T and the missile it fires, called an Aster, is designed to deal with targets that change speed and trajectories and has proved it intercepting Russian ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine.
The big reason that Ukrainian air defenses rarely shoot down incoming ballistic missiles is that interceptor missiles no matter who makes them are ridiculously expensive ($3 million a pop) and what’s worse the US stopped giving Ukrainian Patriot missiles back in February, and since then will only sell them at a marked-up price (Trump really said that), and only if US Patriot missile stocks are adjudged to have excess.
The best guess is that Ukraine operates 8-9 Patriot batteries including two recently delivered by Germany. Ukraine currently operates 2 SAMP/T batteries. Italy promised a third battery which was supposed to arrive in October, but we haven’t seen the news it arrived.
Just in time for the Drone Revolution – NATO shell manufacturing is way up!
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at a Thursday press conference announced that overall NATO ammunition production had overtaken Russia’s, and now the Atlantic Alliance is cranking out more shell than Russia. He said the situation had changed thanks to dozens of new production lines being opened and existing lines being expanded. Right now production volumes are the highest in the last 10 years, he said.
Rutte did not say, but should have said, that by far the most important reason this change has come about is because NATO’s biggest ammo manufacturer, Rheinmetall, back in 2023 started investing, acquiring new capacity and politicking in Berlin to crank up production. Some brilliant executive somewhere had the foresight, even in 2022 if not before, to pile up massive reserves of gun cotton, which is made mostly by the Chinese, so that when demand shot through the roof Rheinmetall had plenty of that critical component laid in store at pre-war prices.
A basic principle driving the expansion was that Rheinmetall absolutely could gear up and even could find the capital to do it, but the orders would have to be booked, unless it’s in a contract a government can change its mind, and if it’s politically expedient it will. The latest news, which was first announced as potential plan assuming orders and commitments could be found to support it, is a brand-new shell factory in Lithuania, another one in Bulgaria, and a gunpowder factory in Romania.
The train wreck of US ammunition manufacturing over the same period, run by the Pentagon, is one of the best examples I know of a hard proof that military manufacturing and particularly expanded military manufacturing needs to be run by the manufacturer(s).
Who remembers King George, tyranny and tea?
This is especially for the Americans who read this far. And the British I suppose...
I read in the US news that the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the Trump administration’s contention that the president has the unilateral right to impose tariffs on imported goods. Details of the arguments in the form of recordings of the government and opposition lawyers are reaching the internet, so we are being treated to some reasonably sharp questioning of the government position by several justices, including Trump appointees, who seem not fully convinced the right to impose tariffs is unilaterally in the president’s hands. After all, the Constitution very specifically and clearly says imposition of taxes is solely the purview of the Congress.
So the government lawyers are arguing tariffs are not taxes. This is requiring some legal gymnastics, because of course imported goods are received by someone, that someone is in the US, the government is placing mandatory fee on the importer so the importer might receive his goods, and a fee imposed on a person or business by government is a tax.
What I am not seeing, however, is the – to me – obvious point that the Americans fought a Revolution against Great Britain, because the British King George claimed the right to put tariffs on goods imported by the American colonies. This was held by the Colonists to be outside the charters that set up the colonies, which reserved taxation to the local legislatures.
(As an aside, the tax itself was tiny and one of King George’s miscalculations was how irate the Colonials would get over a piddling little 3 percent tariff on a luxury product. Being an Englishman, he probably wasn’t aware how difficult it is to overestimate the role potential corporate profit in American national decision-making.)
A big war was fought over this principle, which the Colonists said, predictably, was a righteous war against Tyranny. One of the most famous incidents on the path to that war (1773) was Colonists dressing up as Red Indians (their term not mine) and boarding British merchant ships to throw imported British tea into Boston harbor. The Crown was insisting that to land the tea the importer had to pay an import tariff to the Crown, and the local legislature had no say in the matter. The locals called that Tyranny. Thus the Boston Tea Party image.
The link to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I would say, is pretty direct. When a foreign autocrat decides people in another place must do what he wants and bend to his will, and agreements protecting them from his will are ignored, that decision may well look reasonable to him. Certainly he will find advisors to tell him it is a great idea. But the risk is that the objects of the Autocrat’s will, the people, will resist. The Objects might, er, object.
If the Ruler miscalculates the People’s will and capacity to resist, he will lead his country into a disastrous war. Meanwhile the People will see themselves as fighting for Freedom.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.