Sitrep for October 5-6 (as of 14:30)
The situation on the front line
There was no serious advance by the AFU in the Kherson direction over the past day. That's probably because the Ukrainian troops now have to clean up the liberated territory.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine are rumored to have entered the village of Mylove, but there is no confirmed information about that yet. The same goes for Trifonivka and Nova Kam’yanka.
Ukrainian troops are reported to have entered the long-occupied Snihurivka (Mykolaiv region) two days ago. Now urban fighting is going on there, the Armed Forces of Ukraine control parts of the town. According to the Ukraine Battle Map project, Russian commanders have already left the town, but in general it is still under Russian control. The head of the Mykolaiv regional military administration, Vitalii Kim, reports that Russian officers could have left Snihurivka, but Russian troops are still in the town.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have managed to capture about 10 T-62M and T-62MV tanks in the Kherson direction.
We believe that these tanks are used not only by mobilized soldiers from the separatist republics, but also by Russian regular troops. Back in July, we had  photographs of the 35th Motorized Rifle Brigade servicemen from the Central Military District using T-62M tanks.
There are also many photos and videos of T-62M tanks with the tactical sign V of the Group of Troops “East” (“Vostok”), which is just fighting in the Kherson direction. It is noteworthy that improvised slat armor (so-called "chicken coops") on the top turret designed to protect the tanks from anti-tank missile systems (and turned out to be useless for that purpose) can be seen on these tanks again. But unexpectedly, these “cope cages” proved to be effective against drones dropping grenades from the air as these metal grilles prevent grenades from falling inside the tank.
On the Svatove axis, the UAF have crossed the border into the Luhansk Region after liberating the village of Hrekivka (Kreminna District of the Luhansk Region).
Also, there is now a video that likely confirms the liberation of Makiivka although the video is impossible to geolocate precisely.
In addition, the Ukrainian forces liberated the villages Terny and Yampolivka in Donetsk Region.
Reportedly, UAF succeeded in cutting the road connecting Svatove and Kremnina. We think that a battle for Svatove is imminent.
Unexpectedly, reports appeared of fighting on the outskirts of Lysychansk. This looks plausible but we do not yet have a definitive confirmation.
A new video demonstrates the Ukrainian tactics of fast-moving mobile groups. The groups swiftly enter settlements and quickly subdue the enemy firing points allowing heavy armored vehicles to follow in. In the video, Ukrainian soldiers (or foreign volunteers) in machine-gun equipped all-terrain Humvees are driving through a field trying to avoid Russian fire while engaged in a fierce fight with the adversary. On the Kherson, Kharkiv, and Svatove axes, this tactic proved successful.
CIT and the publication Vazhnye Istorii (Important Stories) have published a joint report on mobilization. Our volunteers along with journalists counted 213 thousand people in 53 Russian regions who have been mobilized or whose mobilization is in the works. By extrapolating this number to the entire Russian Federation, one gets around 300 thousand mobilized that the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was talking about earlier. We would like to point out that in regions like Dagestan, Buryatia, Kaliningrad, Pskov, and Sevastopol, the percentage of the reservists called up exceeds the average. We think this is due to the fact that many army units are located in these (rather poor) regions and, therefore, there’s a higher concentration of contract reservists there than in Russia overall. Hence, it’s not surprising that more people are called up in these regions under the mobilization mandate.
A number of video recordings from the Belgorod region have appeared showing mobilized soldiers staging a mutiny. Radio Free Europe correspondent Mark Krutov pointed to one of the mobilized wearing a patch, as he assumed, of the Wagner group.
Note that in fact this is a patch with the symbols of the “Reverse side of the medal” project, which many associate with the Wagner group, though in fact it acts independently of them. We have already seen such patches worn by regular Russian servicemen, Wagner group mercenaries, FSB special forces, Russian National guardsmen, FSO officers, military correspondents and even ordinary people who are interested in military affairs.
That is, such patches cannot definitely attest to anything. We don't think this video was staged. And the balaclavas mentioned by Mark Krutov, in our opinion, were used to hide the mutineers' identities.
The mobilized have begun to undergo training at training grounds not only in the "DPR", but also in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
The governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, spoke about visiting the military units to which the mobilized residents of the Kursk region were dispatched, and emphasized the very poor conditions of some of the training centers.
The mobilized, quartered in the village of Svetly, Omsk region, recorded a video message where they are asking the authorities to handle the promised one-time payments to their families. In response, on his telegram channel, the Omsk governor stressed the problems with the payments due to a budget deficit.
Residents in the town of Serpukhov complain about the mobilized who get drunk every night, brawl and make a mess.
The US announced a new $625 million security assistance package for Ukraine:
- 4 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and associated ammunition;
- 16 155mm howitzers;
- 75,000 155mm shells;
- 500 precision-guided 155mm shells;
- 1,000 155mm rounds for Remote Anti-Armor Mine Systems;
- 16 105mm howitzers;
- 30,000 120mm mortar rounds;
- 200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles;
- 200,000 rounds for small arms ammunition;
- Claymore anti-personnel mines;
- engineering equipment.
Germany delivered five armored recovery and maintenance vehicles to Ukraine.
Photos appeared of a Geran-2 (Shahed-136) loitering munition strike at the barracks of the 72th Mechanized Brigade of the AFU in the town of Bila Tserkva in Kyiv region. We believe that such large-scale destruction was caused not by the drone’s payload itself, rather by the fire it caused (the building was very old and made partially of timber).
The New York Times reports that, according to the US intelligence, some members of the Ukrainian government authorized the assassination of Daria Dugina, the daughter of Russian far-right philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The US did not know about the planned operation and did not assist Ukraine by strategy consulting or providing with intelligence data. The involvement of the Ukrainian special services in the murder of Dugina is not independently confirmed.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was promoted to Colonel General (only six months after being awarded the rank of Lieutenant General). We assume that this is a birthday present from Putin and has nothing to do with Kadyrov’s feud with General Lapin. Kadyrov is also now listed in Russia’s Book of Records as the person with the world-largest number of sanctions imposed against him.