Sitrep for Oct. 9-11, 2024 (as of 10 a.m. UTC+3)
Frontline Situation Update
Over the past few days, the Russian Armed Forces have made slight advances in the northern part of the Pokrovsk direction, finally capturing the villages of Mykolaivka, Krasnyi Yar and Krutyi Yar. It appears that Russian forces will now move southward toward the town of Myrnohrad. In 2020, the town's population was around 40,000 people, but by September 2024, only about 1,600 people remained. The pre-war population size provides an estimate of the number of buildings that could be used to create fortifications and firing positions.
The RuAF advances in this part of the Pokrovsk direction are largely aimed at straightening the frontline. However, their main offensive actions continue in the southern part, particularly in the Kurakhove direction. Throughout this week, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have successfully repelled Russian attempts to advance towards the village of Ostrivske from Hostre and in the nearly captured village of Tsukuryne. Additionally, attempts to advance from Zhelanne Pershe to Zhelanne Druhe are ongoing, but no confirmed reports of the claimed Russian successes in this area have yet appeared.
In the Kursk direction, Russian forces have advanced in the western part of the Ukrainian bridgehead near the village of Lyubimovka over the past couple of days and captured the villages of Novoivanovka, Leonidovo and Zelyony Shlyakh. However, small settlements in the area may continue to change hands frequently. Additionally, fighting is ongoing near the village of Vesyoloye, where Ukrainian forces breached the border in the Glushkovsky district in mid-September, although no significant advances have been reported.
New York Magazine published an interview with Michael Kofman, in which he analyzes, among other things, the consequences of the AFU's Kursk operation. According to Kofman, the operation boosted soldiers' morale and demonstrated that the Ukrainian Army still has the capacity to restore its offensive potential—provided sufficient weapons are supplied by its allies—rather than solely focusing on defensive actions. In this sense, it was a tactical success. However, from a broader operational perspective, Kofman finds it difficult to label the operation as successful. If the primary goal was to divert significant Russian forces from their advances in and around Pokrovsk, Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, it was not achieved. While the Russian command did redeploy some units from more stable or less active sections of the front in the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions, it did not result in a loss of Russian momentum. In fact, during August and September 2024, the pace of the Russian offensive was the fastest since the spring of 2022.
The last question, and this one Kofman thinks is worth discussing and debating, is to what extent the Kursk operation was a political success. An important motive for launching the operation, according to Kofman, was the fear that Ukraine might be pressured into negotiations from a weak position. However, no significant political advantages were gained from the operation. For instance, following President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's recent visit to the US, no permission was granted for the use of long-range precision weapons, nor were large military aid packages or a concrete plan for Ukraine’s accession to NATO provided.
In this context, it is worth noting that the Ramstein format meeting, originally scheduled for Oct. 12, was postponed due to President Biden being preoccupied with domestic issues related to addressing the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. While Zelenskyy's participation has not been officially confirmed, we still expect him to attend.
Kofman also believes that Russia is operating under significant constraints: the advantages of the RuAF will begin to decline as early as this winter. The Russian Army has been sustaining very high levels of loss in equipment, which are mainly being replenished from Soviet-era stocks. However, production does not cover these losses. Recently, we reported that the RuAF lost more than 500 tanks over the past year while producing just over 200 new tanks annually. This corresponds to the estimates by independent researcher Naalsio.
The shortage of armored vehicles means that the RuAF will need to adjust its tactics—relying more on infantry assaults than armored group attacks, which makes achieving operationally meaningful breakthroughs on the battlefield more difficult. Kofman also notes that the increase in the payouts and benefits to recruit personnel points to a shortage of volunteer fighters in Russia. Despite advancements in the Donetsk region, Russia’s negotiating position is not particularly strong: while in the short term it has enough resources to sustain the war, problems will only intensify in the future. These include high inflation in an overheated economy, a deficit of skilled labor, the gradual depletion of liquid reserves and the dependency of a significant portion of the budget on current oil prices—all of which highlight the instability of Russia’s economic situation, potentially pushing its leadership toward negotiations.
As of Oct. 4, the list of confirmed Russian losses, compiled by BBC News Russian, Mediazona [independent Russian media outlet] and a team of volunteers, includes more than 72,000 names.
The Ukrainian state project "I Want to Find," which deals with locating missing Russian soldiers, has received over 31,000 search requests since its inception in January 2024. We consider this data to be highly plausible, with a strong likelihood that nearly all of these soldiers are, in fact, deceased. Therefore, it can be assumed that the names of over 100,000 deceased Russian servicemen are currently known.
It has come to light that Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who was abducted by Russian law enforcement on Aug. 3, 2023, has died in Russia. It is worth noting that, since Roshchyna was not a soldier, the Russian forces could not legally take her prisoner, making her abduction a criminal offense against a civilian. For a long time, there was no information about her fate, and it was only after nine months that her parents received confirmation of her detention. On Oct. 2, 2024, Russia's Ministry of Defense informed Roshchyna’s father that she had died on Sept. 19 while being transferred from Taganrog to Moscow.
According to Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, Roshchyna was part of a planned prisoner exchange. The cause of her death is currently unknown. According to Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a People's Deputy of Ukraine, Roshchyna was on a hunger strike to protest "inhumane treatment."
Roshchyna worked with Hromadske, Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other outlets, covering the war from the early days of the full-scale invasion and reporting from occupied Ukrainian territories. Back in March 2022, Russian soldiers kidnapped her twice, but released her both times after interrogations.
The Sledstvie.info media outlet published a video report featuring a Russian prisoner of war from the Storm unit—an ex-convict now accused of executing Ukrainian prisoners of war. As it often happens in such cases, he denies the allegations and places all the blame on his fellow soldiers, who have since been killed. This prisoner of war will not be exchanged and is facing a life sentence in prison.
In addition to provoking retaliations, the execution of POWs also discourages enemy soldiers from surrendering when surrounded, causing them to fight to the end. Consequently, the execution of Ukrainian POWs by Russian forces leads to higher casualties among their own troops.
Ukrainian and Russian Strikes
In the early hours of Oct. 9, Ukrainian drones attacked an ammunition storage facility in Karachev, Bryansk region. Video footage clearly shows secondary detonations. The Defense Express and CyberBoroshno projects identified the target as the 67th Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian MoD. As of this sitrep, high-quality satellite images of the aftermath have not yet been published, therefore the full extent of the damage remains unknown.
In the evening of Oct. 9, the AFU launched a drone strike on a facility near the village of Oktyabrsky in the Krasnodar region. Explosions can be heard in eyewitness videos. The General Staff of the AFU claims that the target of the strike was a Shahed-136 (Geran-2) UAV storage site, where approximately 400 drones were kept. According to the Dos’ye Shpiona [Spy Dossier] Telegram channel, 45 Shahed-136 (Geran-2) drones, more than 100 warheads and 4.5 tons of aviation fuel were destroyed in the attack.
Throughout 2022 and early 2023, the RuAF steadily increased the number of Shahed drone launches, eventually reaching an average of 300 per month. By mid-2023, the monthly average had risen to between 300 and 400 launches. In the summer of 2024, the cadence accelerated further, with the Ukrainian Air Forces estimating between 500 and 600 launches in July, around 800 in August and over 1,300 in September. It is important to note that it is impossible to determine how many of these drones were Shahed-136 (Geran-2) loitering munitions, and how many were Gerbera UAV decoys. The two drones are virtually indistinguishable both visually and on radar screens, making identification possible only by examining wreckage on the ground. Decoy drones are easier to mass-produce, and at this point, we cannot accurately assess how much the production of Shaheds has actually increased.
Some studies estimate that, on average, only 14 out of every 100 drones launched by the RuAF reach their intended target. However, even a single strike can cause significant damage. As a result, we believe Western nations should intensify their efforts to hamper Russia’s parallel imports of electronics and drones engines while continuing to supply Ukraine with air defense systems.
Over the past week, Germany has transferred two air defense systems to Ukraine: an Iris-T SLM medium-range air defense system and an Iris-T SLS short-range air defense system. Major General Christian Freuding said that Germany will supply Ukraine with two more anti-aircraft systems by the end of the year, as well as infantry fighting vehicles, tanks and artillery ammunition.
On May 6, 46-year-old Elena Ponomarenko was killed when a Ukrainian drone struck a minibus in the Belgorod region. Seventy-nine days later, on July 24, her common-law husband, 73-year-old agronomist Konstantin Lopatkin, was also killed. His car was run over by a Russian tank while he was returning home to Berezovka, a village 7 km [4 mi] from the Russia-Ukraine border, after attending a fair in Belgorod. The Veter media project and Novaya Gazeta Europe [European edition of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta] published a detailed report about this family.
