The biggest news was probably a corruption investigation that went public this week, involving government energy and military contracting.
Big picture – front lines are stable, tactical picture – the Ukrainians took a visible step back in Zaporizhzhia, and to my way of thinking, are gaining the upper hand in Pokrovsk, although the latter isn’t confirmed.
The Ukrainians and Russians traded major long-range strikes – it’s pretty obvious the Russians are at a stable pace, but the Ukrainians are getting stronger.
Fighting on the front
The main thing that happened this week on the front was a Ukrainian withdrawal from five villages in the Zaporizhzhia sector. Information is conflicting; my guess is this was another one of those Russian infantry pushes into the no-man’s-land/kill zone that will eventually get hunted down, but I can’t say for sure. Here’s an article laying out the various takes on that.
I add that every day this week, the South Defense Forces have put out statements saying Russian troops are taking heavy losses because they’re out in the open with not many places to hide, and the drones are hunting them down. However, to be fair, Russian milbloggers are crowing about a great victory and the impending collapse of Ukraine’s southern front.
In the Pokrovsk sector, I think we need to remember before anything else, that now four full weeks have passed since the “crisis” began and hundreds of Russian infantry infiltrated into the city, and all manner of people decided this was it, Pokrovsk was about to go the way of Avdiivka, Bakhmut, and Vuhledar.
Which it might still (I wrote that very sentence last week), every week that passes is another week arguing in favor of the Ukrainian narrative, which is, yes, there are Russian infantry in Pokrovsk, but they are contained and being hunted.
The 1st Azov and 7th Air Assault Corps are still running the defense; those are both strong organizations. Image of 21 Russians who were probably unpleasantly surprised they had surrendered to Azov’s 12th Brigade in combat around Dobropillia.
The 41st Brigade officer Kyryll Sasonov is describing the fighting this way: “Pokrovsk remains largely a gray zone, a layered pie where you never know who’s hiding in the building next door, even in the basement below. Small raiding parties constantly move around the city, hunted by drones of the same kind. But the overall picture is that, contrary to the enemy’s plans, it is the Ukrainian Armed Forces that are clearing neighborhoods and advancing….Myrnohrad. Our airborne troops are made of titanium, and the enemy is unable to dislodge them from their positions. A couple of days ago, we carried out a daring operation to evacuate the wounded, perform rotations, and deliver ammunition. It was done very professionally. On the downside, the very need for such operations speaks to the difficult logistics situation. And the city is being heavily under attack, including by KABs [guided bombs].”
Early in the week, with a lot of fanfare, Russian milbloggers and even mainstream media made a big deal about how the Russian drone unit Rubicon and its “ace” pilots had deployed to the Pokrovsk sector and were making life Hell for the Ukrainians and particularly shutting down roads used by supply trucks.
What did not make the mainstream in Russia (or the US) at all, and really didn’t penetrate to Europe much, is that the formation Rubicon was formed to copy – Ukraine’s 414 Unmanned Systems Brigade, “Madyar’s Birds” – are in the Pokrovsk sector in force. I can’t say he’s permanently there, but if you watch the Ukrainian news, it’s clear Robert “Madyar” Brovdi is heading up drone operations around Pokrovsk.
Here’s another sentence that was fun to write: “No commander on Earth has more – and more capable – tactical drone units available to him than ZSU Major Robert Brovdi. None.”
- Both sides confirm that Russians in Pokrovsk had a serious supply problem, because after they walked into the city, the Ukrainian drones mined the roads behind them, so supply and reinforcements can’t reach them by ground.
- I’m seeing fresh video from 425th Assault Infantry, 25th Airborne, and 3rd SSO, all seemingly confirming deliberate clearing operations by small groups of what look to me like skilled infantry.
- I’m seeing reports, also on the Russian side, that when the Russian propaganda media put out video showing the foot/motorcycle infiltrators, there was too much local terrain visible, so the Ukrainians geo-located it and called down artillery. (Image)
- On Thursday, the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) hit a wartime (and probably world) record for enemy soldiers killed or seriously wounded by drone in a 24-hour period: 363; the previous record, also set by the USF was 330. In four years of war, I have yet to catch the USF in a lie. I consider this a highly reliable number. The Russian force in Pokrovsk reportedly numbers 200-500 men. You do the math.
- For the past four days, the USF has counted 300+ Russian casualties caused every 24 hours. This is fully one-third of all the casualties inflicted by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU), by all means.
Based on the evidence I’m seeing, in Pokrovsk, the Russians are getting ground down. I accept that other processes are there, but that’s the overall picture as I see it.
Kremlin takes its best shot at Kyiv – Definitely no power grid KO. A Ukrainian air defense victory?
Overnight Thursday-Friday, the Russians launched another major strike against Kyiv, targeting the power grid and heating infrastructure.
This type of attack, of course, Kyiv has seen before, but this was a follow-up attack to a strike, I suppose, about ten days ago, that had damaged the power grid and forced most Kyivites to live with scheduled blackouts. In my district, it was typically 6-12 hours off every day.
This made reports about a new incoming strike, which we first saw a bit before midnight Thursday evening, more unpleasant than usual, because the question wasn’t whether damage would be done, but how much “more” damage would be done.
A proper and detailed run-down of the damage is here.
The worst part, as I write this, seems to be six people killed and dozens injured, with the casualty count likely to rise because at least two apartment buildings were partially collapsed, and typically when that happens, more dead are found later in the rubble. There seems to have been more fires than usual from the Russian strikes, although whether that’s drones with incendiary warheads, falling air defense missiles, or increased use of natural gas in heating, I couldn’t say.
I’ve put together a six-image collage of an apartment building the Russians blasted in Kyiv’s Desiatinsky district, the interiors of two smashed apartments, and the ladies who lived in them. They and their families survived, but one of them was blown out of her bed, and her children too, when a Shahed drone flew into their apartment and blew up. A problem now is that there already had been a lot of planning done for New Year’s, now no place to celebrate it. Images are Radio Liberty and excellent, from today.
By the numbers, it was 430 attack UAVs, three aeroballistic missiles, one Tsirkon anti-ship missile, six cruise missiles, and nine Iskander-M ballistic missiles. Of these, the air defense forces claimed they shot down or decoyed 405 of the 430 drones, two of the three aeroballistic missiles, all six of the cruise missiles, and six of the nine ballistic missiles. I confirm the Ukrainian air defenses seemed to have decent supplies of anti-aircraft missiles, and also the Gephard/Skynet system, which sometimes is in my neighborhood, is back.
Overall, this is a very strong defensive performance by Kyiv’s air defenses; off-hand, maybe not one of the best ever, but certainly up there.
But the real indicator was a Mayor Vitali Kitschko statement this morning: The Russian strikes caused no significant damage to the Kyiv power grid, blackout schedules are unchanged. Where I am, the power came back on ten minutes before schedule, and that schedule was published several hours before the Russian bombers took off.
If the Russian objective was to kill civilians and use terror tactics against Kyivites, last night was a Kremlin success.
If the objective was to add to past damage and further degrade the power grid, from what I can see, the Russians failed; the Ukrainian air defenses were too tough.
Ukraine bombards Russia
It’s accelerating and widening. Here are the notes for the past seven days:
- Voronezh central heating plant, four hits, four to five stories of the main building blown out, Nov. 8.
- Kazan petro-chemical plant, Nov. 8.
- Korenevo power substation, Belgorod region, Nov. 8
- Gvardeyske, Crimea, ammo dump? Oil refinery? Very big fire. Nov. 8
- Taganrog, substation, solid fire, Nov. 8
- Tuapse, oil loading port, pier, sea drones, ship hit, Nov. 9
- Rostov, oil refinery or rail target, fires, Nov. 9
- Saratov, Rosneft oil refinery, five to seven explosions, fires. Nov. 10.
- Rostov, oil refinery, Nov. 10.
- Feodosia, Crimea, oil refinery? Nov. 10.
- Orsk refinery, Liuty drones, fires, on 14th shutdown reported, Nov. 10.
- Stavropol, Stavrolen Heating Plant, Nov.11.
- Oryol, heating plant, air defense firing, four Flamingos(!), one to three hits, one shootdown, Nov. 12.
- Krasnodar Krai, Afipskiy oil refinery, air defense firing, Nov. 12.
- Tartarstan, Nizhnekamsk, Taneko oil refinery, cracking tower hit, substantial fire, 1,130 km (702 miles). Nov. 13.
- Crimea, Feodosia, fuel storage facility, Nov. 13.
- Novorossiysk, Sheskharis oil terminal, Transneft, at least one powerful hit, mushroom cloud, massive fires, missile unit also hit, Nov. 14.
- Saratov, oil refinery, heavy smoke, still burning by afternoon, Nov. 14.
- Occupied Zaporizhzhia, Mala Biloserka RR power station, Nov.11
I’ll go into more detail about two of these strikes, but again, this is starting to look like a bombardment campaign the Russians cannot stop, and that can only get bigger.
Flight of the Flamingos – Oryol
A feature of the Ukrainian bombardment campaign this week wasn’t just more explosions, but bigger ones.
Overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, the Ukrainians launched between one and four Flamingo drones, these are hulking aircraft with warheads made from refurbished half-ton or one-ton aerial bombs. This is by far the most powerful weapon the Ukrainians have to hit Russian targets with, aside from surface-to-surface missiles, and the Ukrainians ran out of those years ago.
The target was a municipal heating plant in the central Russian city of Oryol; this is the Russian heartland. At least two powerful explosions. Air raid sirens on for hours. There was sporadic defensive fire from Pantsyr cannon and air defense missiles, no intercepts were seen in videos. The Flamingos seemed to come in at a very low level. Ukraine’s General Staff took credit for the strike, published video, and confirmed it was Flamingos.
Even if you live outside Oryol, this was an unpleasant event. According to advertising, the Flamingo can reach 3,000 km (1,864 miles) into Russia. That’s not proved, but that the Ukrainians have more than one or two of them is proved, and if the Ukrainians keep to type, they will now accelerate manufacturing volumes and tweak to better overcome air defenses. A heating plant is a pretty big target, and the Flamingo has had some accuracy issues.
The Russians have to know that the more the Ukrainians shoot these things, the more accurate they are going to become. There is no weapon in this war that the Ukrainians haven’t improved on.
The other thing is, there is no way anyone in Oryol could write the attack off as a pinprick; it was war. An aerial bomb cannot be denied or written off as engine backfiring or training.
Novorossiysk is next?
Overnight Thursday-Friday – so the same night the Russians plastered Kyiv with 400+ attack weapons – the Ukrainians launched one of the biggest drone/missile swarms by them of the entire war. Reports are 200+ drones at various targets, with the main focus of the attack vividly and explosively clear: Russia’s Black Sea coast and energy infrastructure.
A salvo of Long Neptune cruise missiles slammed into an oil transshipment terminal near Novorossiysk, one giant hit with a mushroom cloud (image above), and massive fires were recorded, it seems like, by half of Novorossiysk. Both Russians and the Ukrainians confirm Neptunes were used; President Volodymyr Zelensky published a video showing four being launched from flatland. If you want to guess, there are fields in the Odesa region that look like that, but what do I know?
There are scattered reports of a “civilian ship,” to wit, a tanker, that was hit by another missile.
There are solid reports that a nearby and important air defense unit, called unit number 52522, was hammered as well. Reports are that both portions of an S-400 battery and an ammo dump holding S-400 missiles got hit as well. Also hit was an air defense unit with the identifier 1537.
All of this information reached the public domain within hours of the strikes. Ukraine’s Security Service (the SBU), the ZSU, and Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) took credit (I bet they were happy to blow something up and not have to share too much credit with the drone troops).
NASA satellites show fires all around the port; the Ukrainians appear also to have attacked with drones. Image. Russian energy industry sources say the strikes damaged an oil reservoir, a pier, a container terminal, “pumping units,” and an oil-transshipment facility operated by a company called Sheskharis. Five-alarm fire, 51 fire response units on the scene, 172 firemen and support staff.
The more air war-minded of you will notice that it took some Ukrainian skill to find, target, and take out Russia’s premier air defense system, and that it is pretty likely the S-400 existed to protect the fuel loading terminal, and the S-400’s precise mission was to prevent drones and cruise missiles from hitting the terminal and ships tied up there.
The energy industry-minded among you will know this is the second-biggest outlet for Russian oil export on the Black Sea. Reuters reported that the terminal’s operations are stopped.
To add insult to injury, NATO and particularly the Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace, decided that Friday was an excellent day for flying and so sent two reconnaissance planes and a tanker – (Dassault Mirage 200, Airbus A330-243MRTT, and a Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis) to fly the length of the Black Sea to about 70 km (44 miles) short of Russia’s Black Sea coast. If France/NATO had had a hand in the attack, then this would have been the battle damage assessment flight. It is worth noting that the day BEFORE the flight, the US Navy flew a Poseidon sub hunter/spy plane on pretty much the same track: had the Russians turned on the S-400 radar that day, it might have been pinpointed.
None of this is provable, but in the Kremlin, proof is nothing, it’s all about suspicion.
I would say this attack was probably more unnerving for Russia by its implications than the actual damage, which was substantial. The Ukrainians aren’t kidding about shutting down Russian oil export; they are deadly serious. Russian air defenses don’t seem to be able to deal with the threat now. Three months ago, the Ukrainians said they were increasing Long Neptune production; today, we just saw a (very probable) four missile salvo.
This is not just an oil thing. The Black Sea Fleet’s current port, Novorossiysk, is adjacent; if the Ukrainians have the range to hit the oil terminal, they have the range to hit the Russian warships. Which evacuated from Sevastopol back in 2023, because the Ukrainians were shooting too many anti-ship missiles at the Sevastopol port. Now the Russian Black Sea Fleet – what remains of it – has nowhere to retreat to. Logically, it’s only a matter of time before every major Russian warship left in the Black Sea basin is destroyed.
Corruption is as corruption does
“To decide whether the glass is half full or half empty, the first thing you need is a clear glass” – Me
Is a giant, awful, shocking, scandal with criminal charges about officials stealing state money and leaving Ukrainian women and children to freeze in their homes, proof of endemic corruption in Ukraine that can’t be defeated? Or is it proof that endemic corruption is finally being cracked down on in Ukraine?
Either way, it was easily the biggest Ukrainian non-war news this week, and probably the biggest news period.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s energy and justice ministers resigned because the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) alleges that a close ally of Zelensky, Timur Mindich, orchestrated a $100 million kickback scheme involving contracts at Energoatom, the state nuclear operator. Basically, the cost of getting an Energoatom contract was a 10-15% kickback, and according to NABU, they have telephone recordings and bank transfer records to prove it.
Energoatom is the country’s atomic energy operator, and public concern that atomic energy might not be operated responsibly by officials is hard-wired into the Ukrainian national DNA; Chornobyl is in Ukraine. So far, neither of the resigned ministers has been charged. Mindich left Ukraine the day the allegations went public. Mindich is a long-time associate of Zelensky – like, they worked two decades together in the entertainment business, quite successfully.
The scandal is also all about conspiracy to launder the stolen money, and here, a Mindich associate and supposedly personal accountant, a guy by the name of Ihor Fursenko, is the administrator of the missile company Fire Point, which, among other things, manufactures Flamingo missiles. Fire Point, of late, has come under fire for big promises and slow deliveries; the NABU charges make suspicious people think that maybe the reason for the delays wasn’t being used to buy missile parts but to increase offshore savings accounts. Fursenko is arrested. Estonia today said the EU should issue an arrest warrant to catch Mindich.
The position of the administration is that corruption is bad and cannot be tolerated, so let the law take its course and let the chips fall where they may. If you listen to the Kyiv conspiracy lovers, that would cut Zelensky’s political throat because all illegal, corrupt government activities kick back to Zelensky. Which they may, I don’t know, but the Zelensky overt stance is that even a personal buddy and business associate has to face consequences for breaking the law.
By Friday, the government had announced the national gas production company, the national defense manufacturing company, and the national railroad would all undergo audits to make sure taxpayer money is being spent responsibly and not being filched. It almost looks like the Zelensky administration decided now was an excellent time to tackle corruption.
The day after the corruption charges came out, Mindich skipped town, and Fursenko was arrested, a Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) spokeswoman announced that Ukraine would receive €6 billion ($6.97 billion) in new “EU Support,” and that the money was en route and would hit Ukraine’s government accounts by the end of the week.
It is difficult to overstate how critical this financial assistance is. Without it, Ukraine hasn’t enough to buy arms, pay soldiers, keep schools open, etc. About half of Ukrainian state expenditures (actually more when you count foreign money buying Ukraine weapons Ukraine could never afford on its own) are donated.
I guess it’s possible that the biggest corruption investigation of the Zelensky presidency and the entire Russo-Ukraine war, and the release of critical EU funds, is a coincidence. It would be cynical to suspect that Zelensky is a really loyal guy and will support his friends through thick and thin and practically any crisis – but not to the tune of €6 billion of wartime assistance.
Picture of Elliot Ness, hope you get the reference.
The case of the mystery Ilyushin
This is not news; it is a peculiar development that doesn’t have a simple explanation and involves the Kremlin.
On Monday, at about 10:25-30 p.m. Kyiv time, some of the news wires started running reports that somehow the international flight tracking platforms that triangulate the location of civilian aircraft and publish it in real time on the internet, had spotted a Russian government passenger plane, usually used to carry the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, deep inside Ukrainian airspace. Image of flight path.
The aircraft RA-86559 is a Soviet-era Ilyushin Il-62M long-range narrow-body airliner. It is operated by the Russian Air Force (VKS) as part of the 223rd Flight Unit or Rossiya Special Flight Squadron (also known as Special Flight Detachment), so it has special communications gear and is configured for VIP/passenger transport, like Lavrov, military delegations, or diplomats. The Il-62M is a pretty old airplane, but it has excellent range, so normally when one of these is in the air, it means some Kremlin bigwig is on a long-haul mission.
Records show the aircraft has flown to North Korea and Syria for the last few years.
The general conclusion of the Ukrainian air geek internet was that this was just a technical anomaly that you see sometimes on these aircraft trackers; for some reason, data is bad and an aircraft is shown to be where it isn’t, sometimes with the errors in the dozens and even a couple of hundred kilometers. I am told that sometimes jamming to hide the aircraft’s true destination can produce the same anomaly, but it’s pretty improbable unless there was a big jammer aboard.
I happened to be watching when the aircraft disappeared from radars (it was supposedly over Khemlitsky), about 20 minutes later, at 10:23 p.m. “Poof” and it was gone. So maybe somehow the pilot accidentally left a transponder on when jamming was being done, and then someone radioed him to tell him to turn the transponder off. No idea.
Also, the last *confirmed* -- by which I mean media whose staff can’t be sacked or otherwise punished by the Russian government – sighting of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was on Oct. 28. Since then, he’s appeared in media only once, and that was a pre-recorded RIA Novosti interview that could have been anywhere.
So was this a secret Lavrov mission to someplace far away that got outed? Or just electronics glitching? The Kremlin says everything is fine and Lavrov is at work as always.
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.