Don's Weekly, 17 November 2025: Part 1

by Donald Hill (intro by Tom Cooper)

Hello everybody!

For 3,5 years now, I’m tracing this war-porn-bingo in Ukraine. From early Russian advances deep into the country, when the Keystone Cops in Moscow were tidily wrapping up their columns like gifts for the Ukrainian artillery, Javelins and Stugna-Ps. Then followed up with depictions of HIMARS-disco-nights; discussed almost every battle there was to discuss; especially Ukrainian counteroffensives of September 2022, July 2023, and August 2024; the Wagner/Prigozhin’s corpse-parades of late 2022 and early 2023. Together with Don, have assessed his aims for the rest of the year as early as of March 2024 and then followed the Pudding’s Great Fertiliser Offensive on Pokrovsk ever since. In between, have mapped every grid square of the air war; discussed the artillery, and murdered the reporting on growing drone warfare….

It would be bearable to continue in fashion - wouldn’t there be this incredible incompetence and corruption of the Ukraine’s civilian-/political- and military leadership. Seems, this is something nobody can shot down. And it’s so numbing to watch, can’t say. The worst of all is that every single time one thinks there’s, ‘finally’, some sort of momentum in efforts to stop the Zele/Yermak’s idiocies, there’s always some sort of a ‘nail in the coffin’ of such expectations. Hand on heart: can’t care less if the Axel Springer Verlag is fluffing Zelensky through interviews with Yermak about how absolutely innocent, what a little cute baby, no-way-never-corrupt is the President of Ukraine…. But, I do care if this time it was nobody less than the EU Commission - the wannabe government of the European Union - that, right in the middle of massive corruption affairs blowing up into the face of Zele/Yermak, came up with a report concluding that Ukraine is fulfilling 90% of EU’s requirements. Correspondingly, so a speaker there, Ukraine has reformed its constitutional jurisdiction, completed the selection of senior judicial officials, has an effective anti-corruption program, is combating money laundering, curbing the oligarchs, and taking action against monopolization…

That, girls and boys, is the point at which one can do only two things: either lean your head back and start laughing, or wonder: on what planet are the people drawing such conclusions living? …because their home addresses are unlikely to be even anywhere even in the neighbouring solar system…

The alternative is that the EU Commission has now decided to switch its field of activity: from governance to cabaret. That they’re sincerely trying to entertain the population of 300+ million citizens of the EU… just that the tickets cost a few hundreds of billions and the punchline is always, ‘we’ll sanction the Russians harder’.

(Hm… perhaps the EU Commission should not only develop a secret service [presided by van der Leyen, who else…] but also a new logo: a rubber stamp with her photo - wearing a clown nose…?)

Another alternative - and then a very realistic one - is that every time the Kyiv’s PR-department rolls out the next reform in its PowerPoint presentations, the only thing actually reforming are lots of offshore accounts…?

Hey Ukrainians, a serious question here: you - really - want to join the club led by this?

Meanwhile, Ukrainian generals - read: Glavcom Syrsky - are rapidly improving. Primarily in form of developing amazing skills in screwing up the troops on the battlefield and, in tight cooperation with Zele/Yermak…erm.. with Fire Point, of course, moving the decimal points in their procurement reports. Indeed, Syrsky has converted the resupply of UAVs into performance art: at earlier times, he would go visiting, micromanaging, destroying the unit-cohesion, and losing battles at yet another sector of the frontline accompanied by handsome shiploads of artillery shells and FPVs. Meanwhile, there’s such a shortage of both that Syrsky arrives accompanied merely by clipboards, yet more PowerPoint presentations, and lots of medals. Why should he pamper ZSU troops? Let the poor bastards in trenches filled knee-high with water trade cigarettes for drone batteries like it’s 2022 again..

Rather unexpectedly then, Syrsky’s got absolutely no answer to the game of whack-a-mole meanwhile developed by the Keystone Cops in Moscow - because, ‘even’ they can learn: only Syrsky (thanks Zele/Yermak) can’t.

Nowadays, the ‘moles’ in question are GRU-Spetsnaz that swapped pixel-camo-suits for Addidas tracksuits, infiltrating kilometres deep around and behind the Ukrainian positions (sometimes speaking passable Ukrainian, too), then squatting inside empty Ukrainian trenches or basements; and, every time one swings a hammer, they’re using UAV-dropped radios to call for a cable-guided drone or a Shahed to land on one’s forehead.

And, nowadays, their primary targets are Ukrainian drone-teams: the troops supposed to be-, but not protected by the infantry, because the latter is melting away faster than Kyiv can kidnapp additional ‘volunteers’ off the sidewalk to serve in the ZSU. With the consequence of the ZSU meanwhile losing more drone-pilots than infantrymen…

Yup: at the times it appears to be easier to replace a poorly-trained conscript by a kid who used to fly Mavics for TikTok likes, and thus create a cheap, safe Drones Branch (and then so much so: even the Keystone Cops have followed in fashion, and created their own Drone Branch of the VSRF) - it’s the Ukrainian drone-pilots who are the ‘new’ endangered species.

…and then another surprise: the war for which it was clear already in February 2022 that it would be decided by management skills and production, is now decided by management skills and production. Who would have ever guessed that logistics beats the vibes, eh? Actually, for jerks like me, the only surprise is that nowadays it’s the Russians who are winning this way. It’s their units that are operating huge… indeed: superior - numbers of (cable-guided) FPVs, and are excelling in combining these with sophisticated electronic warfare.

That realisation is really nothing but shocking: turns out the side that’s spent the last 3 years into constructing drone-printing factories is beating the side that’s wasted the last 3 years with staging endless conferences and photo-opportunities, fantastic announcements without substance, while enriching itself with corruption plots, and running military operations for the purpose of creating clickbaits on the Telegram, Instagram, X/Twitter, Facebook…

But wait… there are so many other great news, can’t say. Indeed: Syrsky-style fantastic news. Precisely as expected already 1,5 years ago, the NATO-Ukraine super cooperation is meanwhile so successful in losing the air war over Ukraine, that - although skillfully covered up by Kyiv’s PRBs-machinery - this is becoming perfectly obvious in the resulting statistics. Don’s going to go into details, but let me just point out the work of a German-Ukrainian team of the Ukraine Air War Monitor. Along statistics they’ve collected, the air war over Ukraine is definitely in the state of going south - for Ukraine. And for NATO. It’s not only that the interception rates for Russian ballistic missiles and attack-UAVs are in sharp decline, but the tonnage of explosives delivered by those weapons that came through has doubled. All of which is a classic indication of a collapsing ‘OODA-loop’ and abysmally low stocks of SAMs - the majority of which was obsolete already before delivery to Ukraine… What a surprise then, Ukraine’s power grid is falling apart, and 60% of its natural gas production have been destroyed.

…is an unexpected result of a genius masterstroke of endemic incompetence at political- and military tops anywhere from Londongrad to Kyiv: both NATO’s and Ukraine’s best-paid minds that decided that nothing says future-proof like yesterday’s super-expensive surface-to-air missiles. I’m only wondering how do they want to continue investing billions into arms-manufacturing factories of a country where lights are blinking out faster than a drunk firefly… Ah yes! That was solved by Zele/Yermak being so much non-corrupt, that the majority of EU governments have decided to put their financial support for Ukraine on hold…

…only I can be as stupid as not to see the perfection of these brilliant solutions…

But hey: all of this is no reason to panic. There’s also no reason for panic regarding the Russian advance on Hulaypole. The GenStab-U said so, and several Ukrainian journos have faithfully repeated that request, too…

Over to Don…

***

Kharkiv

Russians continue to take casualties, but they keep moving south in Vovchansk. A Ukrainian mortar team, which should be a couple kilometers in the rear, is engaged by a Russian assault team and saved by a drone. As a gray zone expands, the concept of a rear area becomes increasingly tenuous.

***

Kupiansk

Ukraine continues to attack Russian infantry trying to move south into Kupiansk. Clearing operations continue in the town itself. Reports say that 80 Russians are spread throughout the buildings.

…completely unexpectedly, for infiltrating ever additional of their armed mob into the town, the Russians are using exactly the area of the abandoned salt-works, north/north-east of Kupyansk, as announced here… sigh… how long ago…?

A Ukrainian airstrike drops two bombs 4 km apart on either side of Lyman Pershyi. Russians trying to move into Kupiansk are detected near Holubivka. The 8th SOF continues clearing Russian forces from Kupiansk. A couple weeks ago, the 35th Marines focused their attacks on Russians in a building.

Russia discovered five Ukrainian armored vehicles and a Lada in a treeline and destroyed them

***

Siversk

Because Syrsky was too busy elsewhere, the 54th Mech repels an attack northwest of Verkhnokamianske and a Russian surrenders to a drone. Russians raise flags throughout the village of Dronivka.

Ground drones have attacked Russian soldiers before, but the K-2 Regiment did so for the first time. The operator tells his story.

***

(…to be continued…)