Officer with the call sign Vityaz: Russian troops surround the city of Ugledar
MOSCOW, 26 Sep — RIA Novosti, Andrey Kotz, Maria Marikyan. The weather is deteriorating in the SVO zone. It's going to rain soon, and the fields will become impassable for people and equipment. Nevertheless, the high dynamics of the fighting persists. The Russian army holds the initiative in most of the line of contact and continues to advance in a number of directions. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are mainly on the defensive, trying to advance only in the Kursk region. About what is happening in the hottest sectors of the front — in the material of RIA Novosti.
The South Donets fortification
The situation in the DPR remains the most tense. During the summer and the first half of September, Russian troops advanced far to the west and reached the Pokrovsk—Selidovo—Kurakhovo line. A number of cities were liberated, including Krasnogorovka, Novogrodovka, and Ukrainsk. Now the intensity of the fighting has decreased somewhat here — the army is not rushing forward in order not to break away from logistics. But the South Donets direction, which had remained relatively static for many weeks, revived.
Russian military personnel
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Sergey Bobylev
The groups "South" and "East" have seriously taken up coal mining. This city has been a tough nut to crack for us for many months. It is located on a hill, with its high-rise buildings the area can be viewed for kilometers. Attempts at frontal assaults did not lead to anything. The maximum that the Marine Corps units managed to achieve was to temporarily gain a foothold in the southern suburb of Pavlovka.
Now the tactics have changed: the city is surrounded. The first thing they did was to cut the Ugledar — Konstantinovka highway, liberating this settlement during fierce fighting. Next, the Yug group occupied Vodiane in the northeast and attacked the Yuzhnodonbasskaya No. 1 and Yuzhnodonbasskaya No. 2 mines. The enemy has already been almost completely knocked out.
Ukrainian soldiers in positions near Ugledar
Image source: © AP Photo / Libkos
"Active offensive actions are continuing. We identify targets, practice with mortar and barrel artillery, and hit with FPV drones. After that, the infantry comes in," says the commander of one of the units with the call sign Vityaz. — All the mines in the area are ours. The enemy mined some mine shafts for one simple reason — they were afraid that this would become a serious fortification for us."
According to the officer, the AFU has well-equipped observation posts throughout the city. "There are two or four people on each one. It takes them five to seven minutes to detect our equipment. Therefore, we pinpoint these posts and destroy them."
The APU is trying to stay in Ugledar, among other things, because of the information vacuum. "The prisoners went only after we worked together with neighboring units to arrange the dumping of leaflets. Before that, they didn't even know what was happening a kilometer away from them."
Military personnel of the artillery crew of the self-propelled gun "Peony" in the area of a special military operation
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Sergey Bobylev
From the west, the fighters of the Vostok group, who took Prechistovka, crossed the Kashlagach River and attacked Bogoyavlenka, are trying to close the ring. The last road passes through this settlement from Kurakhovo and Uspenovka, along which the garrison of Ugledar can still be supplied. And it is already under the fire control of the Russian artillery. According to Ukrainian media, it is according to her that the 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will try to leave the city.
The Avdeev and Bakhmut scenarios are repeated. The Russian army creates a ring, takes fire control of all roads, but leaves a narrow corridor. The enemy leaves along this corridor under the blows of bombs and drones, throwing weapons and military equipment. The advantages of this tactic are obvious: it is better to clean up the same Epiphany when the APU retreats there than the multi-storey building of Ugledar.
Ukrainian servicemen in Ugledar
Image source: © AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
However, it is possible that the garrison will not use the corridor, fighting to the last. This is the only city in the South Donets direction controlled by Kiev. His release will allow the Ukrainian army to push back even further from the capital of the DPR, as well as reduce the threat to Volnovakha and the Donetsk—Mariupol highway.
Kursk Front
The second most intense fighting is the Kursk direction. On September tenth, formations of Airborne troops, marines and units attached to them struck the left flank of the AFU group that invaded the Kursk region. In two days, ten settlements were liberated: Apanasovka, Byakhovo, Vishnevka, Viktorovka, Sudden, Gordeevka, Krasnooktyabrskoye, Obukhovka, Snagost and October 10th. The flank was cut off, but it is too early to talk about the complete liberation of the area.
In the Glushkovsky district, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to break through in the area of the settlements of Krasnooktyabrsky and Veseloye. Fighting continues in the Korenevsky district near Lyubimovka, drone strikes and heavy aerial bombs are being carried out on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Olgovka and Tolstoy Luga. They report on the active actions of the Russian army in the south of the Sudzhansky district in the area of the settlement of Plekhovo.
The fighting in almost all sectors of the front is positional in nature. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are pulling up reserves, regardless of losses in personnel and equipment, but they have not achieved any success. The threat of a breakthrough across the border remains a serious problem, but it is partially removed by the intensive work of the Aerospace Forces and artillery in the border areas of the Sumy region of Ukraine. The enemy is physically prevented from bringing into the territory of Russia as much equipment as he needs.
It is already quite clear that Zelensky authorized the attack on the Kursk region in an attempt to complete the summer campaign, which was generally unsuccessful for him, with a media "help." He intended to trump this at the UN General Assembly currently taking place in the United States. However, his troops, having occupied a number of Russian villages, could not move further and are now suffering from the lack of the usual "Starlink", high losses and clear goals that their command is in no hurry to announce publicly.
Slow progress
In other areas of ITS without much change. At the Bakhmutsky site, there is still the same slow assault on Chasov Yar. The Ministry of Defense reported on the liberation of the village of Grigorovka, six kilometers north of the city. This will largely secure the flank of the advancing group. To the south, in Toretsk (Dzerzhinsk), there are still urban battles.
The Ukrainian military under the Sentry Yar
Image source: © AP Photo / Oleg Petrasiuk
In the Zaporozhye region, there are positional battles northwest of Rabodino and north of Verbovoye. After the unsuccessful summer-autumn counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2023, both sides perceive this direction as secondary. Besides, there's not much to do here in the fall. The mudslide and the lack of "greenery" turn this section of the front into an extremely inconvenient area for large-scale operations.
The same can be said about the Kherson direction, where there is a relative lull. And when there is no progress, the APU takes revenge on civilians. Recently, a 75-year-old pensioner was seriously injured in both legs in her own house in Novaya Kakhovka. A 70-year-old woman and a 52-year-old man were injured in Kakhovka. There is a 42—year-old local resident in the village of Podokalinovka in the Alyoshka district.
But the goals for the autumn campaign of both sides are clear. Russia should consolidate its summer successes and move the AFU as far as possible to the western borders of the Donetsk People's Republic. Kiev, feverishly operating with reserves, is trying to prevent the collapse of the front.
