Strep for October 4-5 (as of 15:00)

The situation on the front line

Analyst Def Mon shows a map of the AFU advancement in the Kherson direction, according to which Dudchany is under Ukrainian control, and the Russian line of control passes through the village of Mylove.

The actual situation is most likely even more optimistic for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, because the Russian forces must have left Tryfonivka and Nova Kam'yanka in order not to be surrounded.

Residents of Dudchany filmed the AFU soldiers entering the village.

Photos confirming the liberation of Petropavlivka appeared.

According to confirmed data, the Kupiansk bridgehead is about to connect with the southern part of the Ukrainian forces (closer to Lyman). If the connection has already taken place, the Russian forces have been driven from the Oskil River and Ukrainian troops will advance further towards Svatove.

Since everyone is now expecting Ukrainian troops to advance to Kreminna and Svatove, Russian propagandists Aleksandr Kots and Yevgeny Poddubnyi arrived in Svatove to show Russian troops preparing for defense. Aleksandr Kots notes there are engineering vehicles in Svatove, which build fortifications. The video report shows a BTM-3 trenching machine based on an AT-T heavy artillery tractor. In addition, a 152mm 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzer of the 4th Kantemirovskaya Tank Division (with the “oak leaves” tactical sign) was shown in the video.

On the night of October 3-4, Russian troops once again fired at:

• Nikopol. According to the head of the Dnipropetrivsk region military administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, about 30 shells of Grad MLRS and heavy artillery hit the town; four people were injured.

• Kharkiv and Kharkiv region. An anesthesiologist and two nurses died, another man and a 9-year-old girl were injured, and the power grid of “Ukrzaliznytsya” (Ukraine’s national railways) was partially cut off.

• Kramatorsk. Residential buildings and a school building were hit; two people were injured

On the night of October 4-5, the city of Bila Tserkva, in the Kyiv region, was attacked by a Geran-2 (Shahed-136) loitering munition, a fire broke out at an industrial facility.

There was a video with the first mobilized prisoner of war, who received a summons for conscription on September 21 and on September 25, without any training, he was sent to the frontline in the 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Central Military District.

He says that he studied the information on how to correctly surrender and contacted the “I want to live” Project, organized by the Ukrainian government. Once near Svatove, he surrendered.

This is consistent with the data from the Dozhd TV channel, which reported that the first mobilized were sent without preparation to Svatove on September 25.

The pro-Russian Telegram channel “VChK OGPU” reports on the training of the mobilized in the Saratov region. They were in a temporary facility near Volsk, where they practiced ambushes on civilian cars along the roads. This is reported by the local residents. Perhaps, in this way, the mobilized are being prepared to organize ambushes on Ukrainian supply lines.

BRDM-2MS amphibious armored scout cars (decommissioned by Russian Army and used only by the National Guard of Russia), which we have spotted on multiple occasions earlier on trains, arrive at training grounds for the mobilized.

After clarifying the available data, our team is inclined to believe that the Russian Ministry of Defense could really recruit 200 thousand people during the first stage of mobilization, but we do not find sufficient evidence of it yet.

We also need to clarify that it is incorrect to call the current situation a “total mobilization” because this term implies a number of factors, such as mobilization of the economy or introduction of martial law, which are not present now. Therefore, we’d call it a “quasi-partial mobilization”.

Assessing the likelihood of Russia using nuclear weapons, our team admits that before statements by Western officials appear, we may witness “leaks” of intelligence data in some of the Western media.

A video appeared showing a train carrying military vehicles belonging to the 12th Main Directorate of Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for nuclear weapons. The surroundings depicted in the video were geolocated as the town of Sergiyev Posad, and the train was moving north (not towards the border with Ukraine).

Due to the absence of special cars used to transport nuclear weapons in the video, we believe there are no such weapons on the train. It may be just an exercise of nuclear arms guard detachment.

A Pentagon spokesman officially let reporters know that this particular movement of equipment is not yet a reason for any concerns.

Elon Musk's reaction could well have been caused by Russia's endless attempts to intimidate Europe and America.

The BBC Russian Service reports that servicemen of the 3rd Special Forces Brigade from Togliatti were killed during the retreat from Lyman. Nine are presumed to be dead (including several officers) and one seriously wounded. Relatives of the victims said that, apparently, this special forces unit was tasked with organizing rearguard fighting to ensure the retreat of the main forces from Lyman. This is a big loss for the Russian special forces, which could have been avoided by organizing the withdrawal of the Russian Armed Forces from Lyman in advance.

The article also notes that Russian media almost never report on operations involving the special forces of the Main Directorate of the General Staff (former GRU Spetsnaz). Sometimes their victories become known afterwards, but the defeats are always attributed to volunteers, separatists or mobilized soldiers.

The retreat from the Kharkiv region was no different. At the time, the Russian media reported that the frontline had been held by those mobilized from the so-called LPR and the National Guard from Bashkortostan and Samara. A few days later, it turned out that marines from the Kaliningrad region were also captured during the retreat.

Back in July, we mentioned a Russian with Estonian citizenship who tried to buy quadcopters in Estonia to deliver them to the Russian military, but was detained.  Now, the Estonian Security Police handed over these drones to the Ukrainian army.

More details have emerged of the explosion of the MiG-31 aircraft at the Belbek airfield on October 1. The crash occurred not during landing, but at takeoff (with a complete set of ammunition and a full load of fuel). The navigator managed to eject but the pilot died in the explosion.

T-90S tanks of a specific export modification which we asked to help geolocate in the dispatch of September 16 were spotted on the frontline.

The Head of the so-called DPR Denis Pushilin awarded Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov with the Star of the Hero of the DPR.

A Russian citizen died in the crash of a Malian Su-25 aircraft. It is known that the Wagner group has been operating in this region for a long time.