Sitrep for October 12-13 (as of 14:00)

The situation on the front line

For the third day in a row there are no noticeable changes in the front line. Perhaps this operational pause is related to the fact that Ukrainian troops are “mopping up” the liberated territories and building fortifications, or (which is less likely) to the arrival of Russian mobilized servicemen to the front.

Nevertheless, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have liberated the village of Dvorichne to the north of Kupiansk (on the Oskil River).

Studying the reports of the General Staff of Ukraine, analyst Def Mon found that Ukrainian troops had liberated the village of Kovalivka in the Svativs'kyi district. Accordingly, Ukrainian forces are already 11 km away from Svatove. We do not expect Ukrainian troops to make a frontal attack on Svatove, rather they will use the same encirclement tactics as they used to liberate Lyman.

There are no advances on the Kherson front, but the liberation of Chervone village to the northeast of Nova Kam'yanka have been confirmed. We reported about its liberation in our sitrep as of October 10.

The fortifications that the pro-Russian forces are building in the Luhansk region have been geolocated using satellite images in the village of Hirs'ke near Lysychans'k.

The Ukrainian forces captured several mobilized people called up on September 26-27 on the border of the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions. Some of them say that they have been sent to the front with little or no training. One POW admits that in the summer he signed a short-term contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense. And another POW raises doubts among our team: judging by the uniform, he may turn out to be a contract soldier as well, not a mobilized one.

They also say that they were sent to a field with abandoned trenches, which turned out to be built with violations (without a drainage system). As a result of a heavy rain, these trenches were flooded, and the soldiers were taken prisoner while trying to move to other positions.

In Belgorod, a missile fell on a residential building. According to the mayor of the city, it was the wreckage of a missile. At the moment there is no information about victims yet.

Most likely, the Ukrainian forces launched a missile at a military facility in Belgorod (there are quite a few of them, for example, the Belgorod airport, which has become a military airfield over these months), the Russian air defense intercepted this missile, and the wreckage fell on a civilian object.

There is also a version that it could be a Russian anti-aircraft guided missile, which malfunctioned (flew in the wrong direction) and fell on the city. Such incidents have already happened before.

The news of mobilization

In the Voronezh, Rostov, and Kursk regions, the second wave of mobilization was announced. But after the statements from the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense, the military commissar of Yakutia and the President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the “second wave” in some regions was renamed to “additional recruitment”.

In the Astrakhan region, the heads of municipalities received a document which indicates the resumption of recruitment. It also indicates the priority military specialties: gunner, commander of a motorized rifle squad, rifleman, machine gunner, grenade launcher, sniper, armored personnel carrier driver and gunner, vehicle driver and orderly.

Important: possession of a different military designation does not guarantee that you will not fall under the draft!

On October 12th, lawyer and human rights activist Pavel Chikov reported that on October 7th, Andrei NIkiforov, a mobilized lawyer from the St. Petersburg Bar Association, was killed near Lysychansk.

The government of the Chelyabinsk region confirmed the death of five more mobilized.

The Sirena media outlet (created by members of Navalny’s team) confirmed the death of a mobilized soldier from the Moscow region. He was sent near Svatove to the 27th brigade, attached to the Taman division, and died on October 7th.

A reporter for the Dozhd TV channel, Sonya Groysman, in her report, told stories about police raids on hostels and a business center in Moscow, checking documents at the entrance to the metro. This shows that the mobilization is becoming more and more similar to the one taking place in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In Moscow, men en masse become students after the announcement of mobilization. Photos of crowded lecture halls appear on social networks.

But even students are experiencing problems due to mobilization. A student from Moscow who received a deferment from the army was detained twice by the police due to the activation of a facial recognition system that signaled that he was dodging the draft. After the story gained traction, he was detained for the third time.

The RIA FAN media outlet, associated with Prigozhin (owner of the Wagner Group) showed a story about prisoners, who received awards and, allegedly, a pardon for participating in the war in Ukraine.

Human rights activist Olga Romanova and journalists from the “Agency” identified them as Stanislav Bogdanov (in 2013 was imprisoned for 23 years for a murder of a justice of the peace) and Rustam Borovkov (in 2017 was imprisoned for 13 years for robbery). Olga Romanova focuses on the fact that Prigozhin cannot legally pardon them. This is a lengthy procedure, involving the signing of the pardon by the president, and cannot be done retroactively. Therefore, the human rights activist is inclined to believe that the documents they were given were fake, having no legal basis. But, nevertheless, these people can now be out at large.

The well-known international expert on the use of suicide vehicle-based improvised explosive devices (SVBIEDs) Hugo Kaman, (published in Janes - one of the most renowned publications in the field of military analytics) is certain that the Crimean bridge was blown up using a truck, not a boat or a missile. But he is not certain if the driver of the truck was a suicide bomber or he drove unknowingly.

Our team believes that the organizers of the explosion designated by the FSB may be just random citizens of Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden does not believe that Putin will use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. But if Putin uses it, then the Pentagon has measures prepared which will lead to serious and disastrous consequences for Russia.

According to the Minister of Energy of Ukraine Herman Halushchenko, Russian missile strikes have hit 30% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure over the past two days. He also notes that Russia has definitely decided to go hard after the country's energy facilities. We will yet again state that an attack on the energy sector is illegitimate, it is a war crime and terror against the civilian population.

The temperature conditions of apartments in a number of Ukrainian cities will be lowered to 16 degrees Celsius.

At the Rammstein-6 conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on the member countries to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems of various types to build a layered air defense system. As a result of the conference, Ukraine was promised to be supplied with:

• 4 IRIS-T batteries (a battery has 3 launchers,  each one will be supplied with 8 missiles - a total of 96 missiles);
• 8 NASAMS batteries (9 launchers in a battery, armed with 6 missiles each - a total of 432 missiles);
• by the Netherlands - missiles for the air defense systems worth of 15 million dollars;
• by Germany - additional MARS II MLRS and Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzers;
• by France - 3 LRU MLRS (modernized M270)
• by Canada - 500 thousand units of winter gear, 155 mm artillery systems, 15 million dollars for the purchase of equipment and winter clothes from Canadian enterprises, 15 million dollars for the supply of drone cameras and 2 million dollars for Telesat satellite communications.

Satellite images of the crossing over the lock of the Kakhovka HPP have appeared.

Photos of the process of restoring the road part of the Crimean bridge have been published.

A video showing a drone-on-drone fight has emerged. Reportedly, the Ukrainian drone won.

Putin gave a speech at the forum of CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia) about the years of the military presence of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, about “failures in their policies”, that they could not ensure security in the country and terrorist attacks continue to occur. He also called for compensation to the Afghans for the damage caused by the years of occupation and the release of the frozen Afghan funds ( apparently, with a purpose of handing them over to the Taliban).