🇺🇦🇷🇺 #Summary for the morning of December 3, 2023
At the front and behind enemy lines, sad trends for Kyiv are emerging.
Collected and aggregated AFU losses are colossal: 536,854 people (214,883 killed, 62 thousand missing, prisoners and disabled, the rest wounded) together with those “temporarily out of action” (864,374 people - temporary out of service, wounded, but not written off services, military under investigation). In total, 1.4 million people have been out of service in Ukraine since the beginning of the SMO. Of these, a huge part is associated with the failed offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2023.
Ukraine is seriously beginning to mobilize women and expand the categories allowed for service. Western aid, and especially the latest aid package from Germany, is looking less and less convincing. Information is being received about attempts by individual but high-ranking officials in Kyiv to test the waters for negotiations, so far behind the scenes.
Under these conditions, the Russian Army on the battlefield looks much more convincing than the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but the enemy is still very strong. He skillfully uses not its strengths, Russian weaknesses. Inability to operate in large formations on a wide front, weak interaction between units, incorrect assessment of the situation due to “beautiful reports.”
However, Kyiv, aware of the serious risks on the battlefield, begins preparing new defensive lines and ruthlessly pours people into the army as part of mobilization. Internal strife in the enemy’s camp cannot but please Russians (Bezuglaya-Zaluzhny, Zelensky-Klitschko, talking weathervane heads like Arestovich and Gordon), but they should not deceive us either. Ukraine is still under external control, its main task is to be Anti-Russia and cause maximum damage to Russia on the front.
▪️In the Kherson direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to increase efforts on bank under Russian control of the Dnieper. Regardless of losses, the enemy constantly replenishes personnel to replace those destroyed, uses special forces as infantry, and attacks the rear. Ukrainian Armed Forces drones are constantly in the air, hunting for any equipment. Night FPV and drone bombers are actively used. Russia responds with the most powerful FAB-500 and FAB-1500 with UGM, large-caliber artillery and heavy flamethrower systems. Drones are also used extremely effectively by Russian troops: they are hunting for enemy boats and infantry. However, the situation at Krynok has not changed.
▪️On the Zaporozhye front, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trampling in the Rabotino-Verbovoe sack, Russian troops are also counterattacking in small groups of infantry without planning a deep breakthrough. The term “maneuverable” or “active” defense, when superior enemy forces were previously lured into positions recaptured by Russian troops under Russian artillery fire, and gradually losing their effectiveness. If in the summer the enemy threw up to several companies with armored vehicles into battle for these purposes, now there are two platoons of motorized infantry, no more. The periodic use of a pair of helicopters by the Ukrainian Armed Forces at extremely low altitudes near Rabotino looks daring. The accuracy of such shooting is low, but the fact of such actions indicates that some units are insufficiently equipped with portable air defense systems. Enemy reconnaissance and FPV drones remain a serious problem here.
▪️In the Avdeevsky direction, Russians have occupied the industrial zone in the south. They are pushing the enemy towards the village. Northern. On the northern ledge of the front, the initiative is in the hands of the Russian Armed Forces, and a creeping offensive is underway. To the south of Avdeevka, Marinka was almost taken. But behind it, new enemy defense units have been preparing for a long time.
▪️Near Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) a village was captured. Khromovo is an important point for the further development of the offensive to the West.
