Don's Weekly, 22 July 2024: Part 1

by Donald Hill

Hello everybody!

It’s Monday, and thus the time for Donald’s summary of most important developments on the battlefields in Ukraine - and related political ‘battlefields’ abroad - of the last week.

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Northern Kharkiv

With heavy bombardments and diminishing cover, unit density is meanwhile very low in the Vovchansk area. This means it is easier to create a gap in a line and move through it. The territory marked in white on the map changed hands several times in the past week and at the end of last week it was in the hands of Ukraine. There is a report that Russia not only gained control for that territory but that they were able to cross to the southern side of the river, as well.

That report is plausible, but Russia did not cross with a large force and they did not remain there long. Ukraine first called artillery fire on the white section and then crossed the small river from the industrial park to the west. Russia hit the industrial park with airstrikes but Ukraine was able to regain the white territory. For the last three days, Russia has been attacking the territory marked in white, the river crossing to the south, and even the building marked in green in the center of the corridor. All indications are that Ukraine has once again cut off the aggregate plant.

Time will tell if Russia can once again open a route to the plant. They are heavily bombing the next layer of buildings in the “citadel” as the outer layer is largely rubble. They are also blasting the buildings to the northeast of the plant and are trying to prevent further Ukrainian advances in the east.

Ukraine used drones to hit Russian positions in central Hlyboke and along the woods that Russia uses to bring supplies and replacements into Hlyboke. Russia used drones and a lot of air strikes trying to prevent Ukrainian supplies and replacements from entering Hlyboke. Perhaps because of the mutual interdiction of supply routes, territory did not change hands.

A video of two pairs of Russian glide bombs hitting buildings that were 170-300 meters northeast of the aggregate plant.

The first pair of glide bombs can be seen with their wings deployed in the red circles. The shadow of one of the bombs, in the yellow circle, has a better image of the wings. The red X’s are where they land.

The first two impact sites are marked with a red X. The third bomb in the red circle detonates on the small road in between two buildings. The fourth bomb detonated 100 meters away above (to the west) of the third bomb but probably impacted directly on the building located above the third bomb.

Even with near misses, these bombs do a tremendous amount of damage. If there were soldiers inside the buildings they might have been hurt by debris from the building, but they are also at high risk for concussions, damage to hearing and possibly to internal organs. If you look at the building in the left image you can see many holes in the roof from shell fire. If you look at the image on the right, you can see dust being blown upwards from some of those holes by the pressure wave. The wave enters through doorways, windows and any old or newly created gaps in the wall. The reason why dust is blowing out of some of the holes but not all of them is probably because some interior walls are still standing to block part of the expanding pressure wave while other interior walls were probably destroyed by the earlier shelling.

Here are four more videos of glide bombs. In the second video, you’re viewing it from almost directly over the aggregate plant north to the ‘citadel’. In the fourth video, at the 0:13 mark you can see the pressure wave from the detonation rippling 400 meters from the village of Velyki Prokhodi to the fields.

This video shows a Ukrainian self-propelled gun that is well-dug in and camouflaged. The firing position was created with an excavator. Units only receive excavators through donations.

A treeline used by Ukraine to enter Hlyboke was attacked by four accurate glide bombs.

Apparently, and not for the first time, Russian flags are worth a drone. This one was 3500 meters north of Hlyboke.

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(…to be continued…)