Don's Weekly, 23 December 2024: Part 1

by Donald Hill (intro by Tom Cooper)

Hello everybody!

I’ll shamelessly admit: I was short of posting at least two updates on the War in Ukraine this week. Each time stopped myself. Principally because there was nothing ‘better’ to start with but lamenting about Zelensky’s entirely pointless meetings with EU’s chieftains, or Ukrainian UAV-strikes on skyscrapers in Russia (‘in retaliation’ for intentional Russian strikes on multiple apartment buildings in Kyiv); or about the encirclement of yet another battalion of the Ukrainian army by a Russian flanking assault (this time in the Makarivka area, south of Velyka Novosilka); about idiotic Ukrainian generals continuing to destroy the ZSU and lose terrain while actually running the same kind of ‘meat assaults’ like the Russians… I mean: when even the mainstream-media - which is always some 2-6 weeks (sometimes even the similar amount of months) behind the news in this war - starts discussing massive mistakes by ZSU’s generals (and that on basis of reporting by exactly the same Ukrainian military experts for which several readers here have advised me to follow, so I wouldn’t criticise Syrsky and his buddies), then one knows ‘what’s the time’…

Add the reports about electronic warfare meanwhile disabling up to between 60 and 80% of all the FPVs operated by both sides (but, especially Ukrainian FPVs)… and well, this is not only frustrating, but the question is also that of why ‘repeating the exercise’ - and ‘reporting’ what has already been reported? That’s, simply, not my style.

Arguably, there were few Ukrainian counterattacks this week, which ‘even’ recovered some ground. Thus, not all the news were ‘bad’. However, details on such operations are better ‘integrated’ into the following review by Don.

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Kursk

Despite suffering massive losses in the process of recovering Plyokhovo, the Russians have managed to consolidate their gains there. Elsewhere around the (undisputably: decreasing) Ukrainian ‘bulge’ in the Kursk Oblast, the Russians have managed to grind themselves to the Kruglenkoye in the north-west and have recovered Novoivanovka, further south.

A Ukrainian BMP is destroyed in the northeast corner of Darino.

The 1st Tank Brigade eliminates 8 vehicles moving south from Novoivanovka. Magyar’s Birds also has one of their detachments in the area. They used bombers to drop mines during the night, which stopped a lot of vehicles during the next day. Here's four minutes of Magyar narrating while his drones destroy the immobilized vehicles and hunt for some of the surviving Russian infantry.

The 17th Tank Brigade had a lot of its battalions removed and assigned to new mech brigades. Two tank battalions remained and to that they added two mechanized infantry battalions and two rifle battalions and renamed it the 17th Heavy Mechanized Brigade. In this video they use artillery, MRL, automatic grenade launchers and drones to eliminate North Korean/Russian soldiers. The FPV drones don’t have an accompanying reconnaissance drone to observe the attacks and immediate aftermath, but drone footage at the end shows a lot of enemy dead.

The Russians celebrated the 155th Brigade taking the eastern half of Novoivanovka, which implies the Ukrainians had to at some point. The 22nd Brigade now has a battalion in Kursk and they stop an attack north of Novoivanovka.

A lot of videos of the large North Korean/Russian attack last week are now available. The large attacks weren’t the wave attacks that you might imagine from WW1, but more like this platoon-sized column formations, which is large by this war’s standards. 200 meters later, most of those infantry stopped moving. Infantry in the open are an optimal target for GMLRS.

The 73rd Naval Center SOF hauled a 35 kg grenade launcher into position and used it as an indirect fire weapon to attack Koreans and Russians and followed up with drones. They report that 12 were killed and 20 wounded. The 8th Special Operations regiment placed ornaments on some of the drones, and got a close look at their enemy. The 6th Ranger Regiment mops up Korean troops. The Russians lined up their own dead and a driver lost control and dropped some of the bodies he collected.

West of Nechaev, Russian/North Korean troops are reduced by artillery and drones by the 95 Brigade.

North Korean soldiers move from Plyokhovo into the woods to the west. Soon after, they conducted an MLR attack 3500 meters west of the village.

A Ukrainian drone makes a pass low over one North Korean soldier and directly towards another soldier. The second soldier misses the drone but as the drone spins about it turns out the second soldier shot the first soldier.

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Northern Kharkiv

The Russian attacks in Vovchansk have continued since the invasion of Kursk, just not with as many personnel or vehicles. Most of northern Vovchansk is a wasteland of rubble with little to no cover. It appears that Ukraine is no longer attempting to occupy this ground because of the shortage of cover and the difficulties in supplying any infantry occupying these positions. Russia does not have these concerns, and when they send small teams into the positions of limited cover, Ukraine is able to observe their movements and then send drones to eliminate them. In this video, Russian positions and assault groups are targeted by drones in the southwest corner of the wasteland that is northern Vovchansk. They are also attacked 400 meters from Russian lines in the center and the eastern side of the wasteland.

If you want to intercept high altitude reconnaissance or Lancet drones you need radars to detect them and provide the location for drone operators to intercept them. The drone operators then take to the air and confirm whether it is a Ukrainian or Russian drone and intercept the latter. The 3rd Assault Brigade is one of the brigades with enough resources and organizational capability to run these operations and this is a compilation videos of their interception missions in the Kharkiv sector.

Since Ukraine started intercepting high-flying drones, the number of Lancet attacks has significantly decreased.

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Kupiansk

The second Russian bridgehead across the Oskil continued to expand until the Russians were in the southern half of Dvorichna. The same battalion from the 10th Mountain Brigade that eliminated the first bridgehead engaged the Russians here with drones. A column headed south towards Kupiansk was destroyed.

Russia tried to advance near Pischane with two different columns but the drones of the 92nd and 77th Brigades, plus a battalion from the Presidential Brigade destroyed 21 armored vehicles.

An excerpt of a six minute video of Ukraine shelling southern Kruhliakivka near the Oskil river. A Russian assault that passed through that location was destroyed.

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(…to be continued…)