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Russia-Ukraine SITREP for 30 AUG 2023 23:59* - Situation Report Number 500
🕑 Added 2023-08-31 10:24:15 +0000 UTCAre you new to our Patreon? You need to click on the link to download the PDF attachment, which has links to all the videos referenced.
This is Report 482, which is 50 pages and a full report.
But wait, there's more. This is the 500th Situation Report, including summary reports done during travel and when your editor-in-chief had COVID in June 2022.
What's the big story? Igor Strelkov Girkin is running for President of Russia from his Leftovo Prison cell.
What's the second story? Russia rejected Brazil's offer to independently investigate Prigozhin's airplane, ehem, "crash." A lot of love between the BRICS nations this week.
Summary
- Positional fighting continued in Kharkiv and Luhansk, with Russian forces making marginal gains in the Serebryanskyy Woods
- Fighting continued south of Bakhmut at Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka
- Two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters flying to Bakhmut for a combat mission collided near Kramatorsk with the loss of four pilots and two door gunners
- Positional fighting continued in Marinka and near Staromaiorske
- Ukrainian forces have breached the Surovikin Line and are on the western edge of Verbove, but the size of the force remains unclear
- Intense fighting continued southwest and southeast of Roboytne
- At least one Ukrainian cruise missile struck Fedosia and knocked out power
- Satellite imagery showed that the damaged highway sections of the Kerch (Crimean) Bridge had been removed by Russian engineers
- Ukrainian insurgents destroyed the headquarters of United Russia in Nova Kakhovka
- Russian officials claim a drone was shot down over Moscow
- A substation in Moscow was set on fire by partisans
- Video showed that drones attacked Bryansk for the second day in a row
- A drone was downed by electronic warfare near Voronezh
- Partisans destroyed railroad relay boxes in Ufa, delaying train traffic
- Pictures and satellite images have confirmed two damaged and one destroyed Il-76 transport planes at Pskov
- Self-declared illegitimate President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, had an unscheduled call with Russian President Vladimir Putin
- The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine has requested that all medical deferments issued since February 24, 2022, be rechecked
- MP Fyodor Venislavsky recommended that exemptions from military service for people who are studying for a second college degree should be ended
- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had his powers extended through October 2024
- The European Union is seeking ways to accelerate ammunition shipments to Ukraine
- The F-16 training base in Romania has still not opened
- Germany shipped another package of military aid to Ukraine
- Ukraine has modified the P-360 Neptune antiship missile so it is capable of striking ground targets
- Russian milblogger Andrei Morozov (Murz) revealed that casualties among junior grade and field officers in the Russian Federation Armed Forces are degrading the quality of leadership
- A representative of Private Military Company (PMC) Wagner Group has recommended that mercenaries find other work
- The largest book publishers in Russia have been told to suspend the publication of books that mention PMC Wagner and Yevgeny Prigozhin until “the resonance from his death subsides”
- Colonel General Ramzan Kadyrov restated his loyalty to President Putin as speculation grows that his previous support of Prigozhin could make him a target of the Kremlin
- Miroslava Reginskaya, Igor Strelkov Girkin’s wife, complained that when he was transferred from Lefortov Prison for his hearing, he was seated with Ukrainians
- Girkin’s “Angry Patriot Club” announced that he would run for President from prison and released his platform on his Telegram channel
- The Russian Ministry of Defense is reforming one guards motor infantry division, three airborne (VDV) divisions, and developing the 4th Army Corps with mostly mobiks
- Lithuania has summoned the Papal Diplomat due to Poep Francis’ statement about the Russian Empire
- Russia’s experiment of sending civil airliners to Iran for service and maintenance isn’t working out
- The cost of gasoline and diesel fuel in Russia has increased from 42% to 74% in 2023
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Comments
The F-16 issue is a lot more complex than training pilots. To stand up the maintenance and supply chains during an ongoing war is a huge undertaking. I’m sure a lot more has been going on behind the scenes than we realize. For example, it took Poland 10 years of US defense contractors working with the polish air force before they were able to maintain their own F-16s. And that was considered incredibly fast and a best case scenario of a country adding F-16s to their military. Now add an active war zone, where the US refuses to allow personal to operate and you begin to see the real scale of the problem. I should also add while plenty of countries operate F-16s only the US has the industrial base and supply chain capabilities to support them in Ukraine at scale. Best case with compressed timelines and significantly higher risk tolerance it will be half a decade before Ukraine can properly field a F-16 fleet without needing to send them out of country for most maintenance. My final point is, because the scale of the challenge is so massive the cost to overcome it is in the multi-billions. And if you are the Biden administration and you only have so many billions in aid authorized to give what are you going to pick? Set up 50-80 F-16s or provide Ukraine millions of rounds of ammo, missiles, drones, AA, radars, support vehicles and other equipment/supplies? I believe this is the main reason it has been a slow roll and not for political ones.
Congratulations on the 500! Can I just remind you about one aspect of your analysis which seems to be slipping - the humour! It was the amazing sarcasm, the camels and the general humanity that made you different from ISW and all the others, and made it possible to stay on top of everything without despair. Keep smiling whenever you manage to! Good luck going forward and thank you for being different!
Patrick Wilkie
A little more on the F-16 hostages...thus, as Nightline did at the time, conduct (or attempt to conduct) an interview with an Administration "official" each day to ask: (1) why the U.S. has slow-walked the program (2) what they have done to resolve the issue (what is the new date of hostage release?).
Patrick Wilkie
With regard to the F-16 training program, the repeated delays are clearly unconscionable. I think the Biden Administration should be explicitly called-out for is behavior. Thus, I suggest referring to it in much the same way as the Iran Hostage Crisis was by Ted Koppel...Ukraine's F-16 pilots held hostage, Day 320 (or whatever starting day is deemed appropriate) and then increase the count until the program is actually finished and the hostages have been released.
