Opinion: Dobropillia Victory, Energy Blasts, Casualty Counts, Inkerman Revisited

The major news this week probably is Russia shifting bombardment focus to hit Ukraine’s power grid and heating networks harder with the realistic objective of making the winter more difficult for Ukrainians, and for the loopy, absolutely silly objective of breaking Ukrainian will to resist.

There’s been all manner of other news over the week, smaller but interesting items, so where possible I’ve tried to keep the information visual. As is traditional, the kick-off is with the fighting front.

The Fighting Front

This week saw more Russian advances totaling about 35-40 square kilometers (14-15 square miles) gained, mostly through small unit infiltration into weakly held Ukrainian sectors. Overall, the pace of the Russian “offensive” has effectively stalled. In my view, the main objective of these small advances is so that lower-level Russian commanders don’t have to report to higher-level Russian commanders there is no “progress.”

Speaking of which, Putin this week at one of these rah rah Russia conferences said Russian forces are relentlessly advancing, that in the past nine months alone his troops had captured 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) of Ukrainian territory. This sounds like a lot, but everything is relative: that’s an aggregate about the size of Yellowstone National Park or Germany’s Saarland, or one-half of one percent of Ukraine’s total territory.

The Russian gains, such as they were, were in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. I am well aware of all the noise around Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region. There it looks like hard fighting, but who controls what isn’t clear, at least to me.

The Ukrainians, by my count this week, seem to have liberated something like 10 or perhaps 15 square kilometers (4-6 square miles) collectively in Donetsk/Dobropillia, Dnipropetrovsk/Oleksiivka and Kupyansk/Pesachne. In all but the Dobropillia cases, it’s hard to tell whether these are pushes into the gray zone to stay, or just to hunt down and kill Russians.

Victory in Dobropillia

I’m singling this battle area out more to register the fact of the Ukrainians fighting a pitched battle and winning, rather than its influence over the entire front.

On Monday, General Oleksandr Syrsky announced what most of us had already concluded, that mopping up operations around Dobropillia were finished, that what Russians in the area had been destroyed or put to flight, and that the old mid-June front in this sector had been restored.

For details on the battle there’s lots of content out there including previous reviews, but the short version is that in roughly mid-August the Russians made a 15-km (9-mile) push north-west of Pokrovsk using massed infiltrating infantry, the Ukrainians found reserves built around 1st Corps (Azov) to contain and then cut up the penetration, and by late September the Russians had been cornered in two or three pockets.

This wasn’t a giant battle, but it wasn’t tiny either. The Ukrainian sources say that the Russians initially committed units smaller than regiments but bigger than battalions (from 132nd and 114th motorized rifle brigades and 88th Regiment, all of 51st Army), and later on they tried to beef up the break-in with sizable (battalion?) elements of 336th naval infantry brigade and 39th motor rifle brigade and smaller (company?)-sized elements of the 1st, 5th and 110th motorized rifle brigades.

According to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) and Syrsky, overall, the Russians committed about 15-20,000 men (!) to this operation, of which the Ukrainians made 12,000 casualties and 7,200 irrevocable casualties. The assault infantry regiments were at the forefront of the counterattacks, and Ukrainian casualties were, I am told from multiple sources, limited but far from none.

UPDATE: It seems reports of Russian counterattacks, with tanks and armored fighting vehicles, are confirmed around Vodymyrivka. I’ve seen reports of IFVs, tanks, and motorcycles ranging from 15-70 vehicles, and the ground force at between 50-100 troops in the village. Ukrainian sources say this armored force is being cut to bits, and drone pilots are confident they can hunt down the dismounted infantry. But at minimum, the Russians don’t seem to think Dobripillia is over, no matter what General Syrsky said.

But already it’s an indisputable ZSU victory, effectively all ground recovered, penetration cut into pieces, Russian prisoners of war were several dozen, not hundreds, never mind thousands, and reports of massed Russian surrenders or panic were nil. This was a Russian defeat but no rout.

As to the future, the reports I am reading on the Ukrainian side are predicting more pushes towards Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and Kramatorsk, very possibly mechanized/tank, because with the leaves falling off the trees, infiltrating infantry has gone out of fashion.

I think it’s also worth noting that in one of those televised talking heads deals this week, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov (still alive, still has his job) told Russian leader Vladimir Putin the Russian army’s “new” offensive will focus on capturing the towns of Prymorske and Stepnohirsk in the Zaporizhzhia region, along with “fresh assaults” on Dnipropetrovsk. Putin nodded and said he approved.

On the Ukrainian side, let the record reflect that, this week at least, if you believe official announcements, the ZSU joint forces Dnipro command is no more, it’s been replaced by two of the new Corps. I doubt that the process is as complete as the ZSU seems to be describing it, but theoretically, it’s a step in the right direction. We shall see how serious General Syrsky is about maintaining corps integrity and not micromanaging, if General Gerasimov makes good on his threats to attack in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Russia Takes Aim at Ukrainian Energy and Heating – Again

Long-time readers will certainly remember the Russians tried to force the Ukrainians to quit fighting during the winter 2022-23 by blasting infrastructure delivering electricity, water, and heat to the general public. This ailed because it turned out Ukrainian civilians’ value living in a country with freedom and democracy more than the Kremlin thinks anyone with a right mind would.

So I suggest you read this section from the perspective of, OK, but the people being bombarded, they’ve been through this before. To the extent that terror is being weaponized by the Russian Federation against Ukraine’s civilian population right now, that terror is going to be less effective because the Ukrainians know they faced it down a couple of years ago, and Russia is weaker, and Ukraine is stronger now. That’s not to say the winter can’t be miserable – water’s out in my apartment and things are a lot worse for others – but it is to say I sure wouldn’t bet on the Ukrainians being beaten into submission, they have a track record now.

On Oct. 2-3, the Russians launched 381 Shahed-type drones and 35 missiles (cruise and ballistic mixed), and the primary targets were natural gas production facilities, particularly in the Poltava region. The Shebelinke gas processing plant, which does both extraction and refining, got hammered, and by Thursday, Bloomberg was reporting about 60% of Ukraine’s natural gas production capacity was offline and would be for a long time. This means that in order to keep thermal power plants going, Ukraine will need to find about $4 billion it doesn’t have to have gas piped in from European producers.

Ukrainian civilian outlets like Naftogaz, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and my apartment complex chat group are all saying get ready for power outages and colder living spaces.

I should add that the wave of strikes also killed five civilians, injured dozens of others, and cut off power to about half a million people. The Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipro, and Kharkiv regions seem to have gotten the brunt of it, although power was restored.

Then, Thursday-Friday, the Russians launched another big strike, targeting lots of things, but especially it looks like two electricity power plants in the north of Kyiv.

Hits cut off power to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the city, one baby was killed, and nine adults were injured (casualty counts are still in progress). Kyiv city mayor Klitschko says there will be water main stoppages and power outages for the next 24 hours. The outages also shut down commuter trains and part of the Kyiv metro, so there were some epic traffic jams in the capital today. Several other cities were hit as well, strike map attached.

For reference, this is what the Russians launched at Ukraine to get those effects, plus ZSU shootdown claims, the first number is intercepted or jammed, the second number is the total launched by the Russians:

• 405/465 Shahed drones

• 1/2 Kinzhal “hypersonic” missiles

• 4/14 Iskander-М ballistic missiles

• 9/12 Іskander-K cruise missiles

• 1/4 Х-59 cruise missiles.

This works out to 13 missile hits and 60 drone hits at 19 locations across the country.

This section is probably best closed out by a Zelensky quote from Thursday, to the effect of “If Russia is threatening blackouts in Kyiv, let them get ready for blackouts in Moscow.”

So it seems like put up or shut up time for the Ukrainians, and another round of necklace-clutching and kerchief-twisting by the Europeans. The Americans will, of course say “not our war,” which is pretty rich coming from the world’s second-biggest nuclear power and Russia’s main adversary.

Russia Resorts to Chickpea Warfare

Better-read readers will recognize the reference to the strategic importance and national cultural significance of falafel, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and the greater Middle East.

In Ukraine, on Oct. 7, at least one – and most sources believe two or three – Russian missiles struck the Yofi Hummus factory in Kyiv, operated by the major foods producer GoodFoods LLC. Staff, which had about 20 minutes’ warning before the missiles (Kh-101 cruise missiles) hit, which is interesting because the Ukrainian internet is usually excellent at reporting incoming missiles, but in the open-source context, poor at identifying probable individual targets. So, there were no casualties.

However, the 2,000-square-meter (22,000-square-foot) factory and the production lines inside were badly damaged, building structural integrity was undermined, power wiring torn up, parking lot left a mess, executive offices no longer fit for meeting, etc. etc. Yofi produces around 1,200 tons of hummus annually in a variety of flavors including classic, olive, and spicy (I am old school and buy classic), it’s a staple product in most Ukrainian grocery stores, and the Russian strike – a war crime as far as I am concerned, I like hummus – wiped out 70% of Ukraine’s domestic hummus production capacity.

A Russian official statement that day said the Russian military only attacks Ukrainian military targets, which is hard to believe considering we’re talking about hummus.

I think it’s only fair to steal a quote from the Fortune magazine write-up on the attack, quoting a company executive: “The enemy our country is fighting launched a missile strike on our factory… We will return stronger.”

Also, beware Palestine and Israel, Ukraine grows chickpeas, image of a Kyiv outfit already daring to enter the world falafel lists.

And the Russians Are Now Hunting Passenger Trains

Another visible development this week has been the Russians working harder to attack and damage Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, leading with energy and heating but not only.

For instance, on Saturday in Sumy region the Russians hit a moving passenger train (image) running between Shostka and Kyiv, possibly with a Shahed, this kind of targeting is new and this kind of targeting on a heavily-used passenger route is quite new.

Ukraine Attacks Back – The Oil and Gas Hit List

Said it before and said it again, this war is two-way, and anyone looking at it as Russia just beating up on Ukraine is stupid.

Ukrainian drones were in the air and hitting Russian oil and gas infrastructure at a pace similar to last week, so, it’s reasonable to agree with conventional wisdom that says that about 20% of all the Russian Federation’s oil processing capacity is offline because a Ukrainian drone blew something up, and if we’re taking capacity within range of Ukrainian drones, then a fair guess is the figure is 50%. Here’s the list, note the record-breaking Tiumen strike:

Orskenefteorgsintez, Orsk, 1,500 km (930 miles), AN-126 Lyutiy (first time painted black!), Oct. 3

Kinef Oil Refinery, Kirishi, St. Petersburg. Autocannon. Fires in the vicinity of Cracking tower. Genshtab. Oct. 4

Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, Nizhegorod, fires, Oct. 5

Tuapse, fires, oil-similar explosion, drones reported. Oct. 6

Feodosia, fires and drones reported, fuel depot, fires still burning four days later. Oct. 6

Tiumen fires, three drones, Antipino district? Oil refinery vicinity, new L-R record 2,050 kilometers (1,275 miles) Oct. 6

Crimea, Gvardeyske, fuel storage base, in the vicinity of Simferopol. Oct. 8

Volgograd, Yefimovka oil pumping station, Kotovo gas processing plant, big fires, Oct. 8

Rostov, Matveev Kurgan, underground oil storage, right on the Donetsk highway, Oct. 9

And there was this small item which may have a downstream effect: according to the energy industry publications, on Sept. 3, the Russian government banned, I say again banned, taking an oil refinery offline for scheduled repairs. As we all know, if you don’t maintain something as complicated as an oil refinery long enough, never mind an oil refinery in Russia, you technically don’t have to hit it with Ukrainian drones to stop it from working; sooner or later, it will break on its own.

Other Ukrainian Attacks

– “Partisans” blew up a Russian fuel train in Leningrad Oblast, GenShtab took credit, thereby stealing glory away from Russian civilians armed and otherwise fighting for freedom. The Kremlin said hitting a target like this was a war crime

– In a possible “we can do this too moment,” the Ukrainians, on Tuesday, flew a small drone into a cooling tower on the premises of the Novoronezh Nuclear Power plant, no damage or casualties, no radiation leaks, dark mark on the cooling tower. This was either a warning shot or a jamming interception that went to ground at an unfortunate location. I can’t find much information on the type of drone. There’s a pretty good picture of the scorch mark, image.

– On Oct. 5, so Sunday, HIMARS/M270 rockets again (following Sept. 28) hit the main power station in Russia’s Belgorod region, cutting off the lights to about 5,400 people, local officials said.

– The most spectacular behind-the-lines attack of the week, however, took place on the far side of the Ural mountains, in Novosibirsk, where for unknown reasons a military electronics plant exploded, caught on fire, this all on Thursday, and by Friday it had burned down to its foundations. The factory is right by a major highway, so no way to keep the damage secret.

The factory produces components, the electronics for the components, and repairs broken ones.

From what I read, the authorities aren’t even trying to claim it was because of human error or someone smoking where they shouldn’t have. This has all the earmarks of a HUR/SBU sabotage operation, and probably one of the more successful ones of the year. So far. And Spider Web was this year as well.

– Joint forces south, er Dnipro, er Unmanned Systems Forces operating in the Kherson sector reported a successful strike with an FPV (First-Person-View) drone 75 kilometers (47 miles) in the Russian rear area. No outside confirmation, so grain of salt. Map.

Also, this week, there was yet. more. talk. about Ukraine, maybe getting US-made Tomahawk missiles, about which the US President held forth, saying absolutely nothing of value. Today Putin in front of media said: (1) Zelensky is just spouting steam, because Ukraine can’t attack Russia seriously because Ukraine has no US weapons and so isn’t serious and (2) were Ukraine to somehow magically receive Tomahawk missiles, all Russia would do is tighten its air defenses; Russia is not afraid of Tomahawks.

New Russian Loss – Basically All Those Reports of Shocking Numbers of Russian Casualties Look Real

The long-running Ukrainian information platform Khochu Zhit (translated: “I Want to Live”), which collects information about Russian service casualties and personnel killed in combat, and releases it to the public, this week (Monday) put out a data dump purportedly taken from classified Russian state sources, specifically the Russian army General Staff, giving actual Russian army casualty counts for the first nine months of September.

Here’s the link.

The published numbers are:

Total: 281,550 people, including:

– Wounded – 158,529 people

– Killed – 86,744 people

– Missing in action – 33,966 people

– Captured – 2,311 people

Average monthly casualty count: 35,193 people.

There were also detailed numbers on combat systems and equipment losses; if you want to see that, you have the link.

Remember what Putin said? 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) “liberated” in 2025? Well, by those numbers, that’s 112 dead, wounded, or captured Russian soldiers lost for every square kilometer of Ukrainian territory captured, or one Russian citizen (or hired mercenary) for every 10 square meters (108 square feet) of Ukrainian land.

Another way to look at that is that those purported official internal Russian numbers work out, almost exactly, to the average daily casualty rates estimated by the ZSU, i.e., about 900-1,100 men a day. So this is a pretty good confirmation that the ZSU estimates of Russian losses are at least ballpark accurate.

I won’t go into detail this time on the implications that has for the strength of the Russian force over the long term, but generally speaking, they’re hurting for people, and they’re particularly hurting for combat-suitable men. Proportions of felons, middle-aged, indigent, and formerly invalid, are all increasing. Image of some Imperial Russian soldiers taken prisoner after the Battle of Tannenberg.

Remember the Ukrainian Artillery Crisis?

This week, President Volodymyr Zelensky told the media that Ukraine produces 40 Bohdana self-propelled howitzers monthly, which was fudging things a bit, when people checked, it turned out it’s 20 self-propelled howitzers and 20 towed guns.

But the upshot was that as of October 2025, the Ukrainian president was telling media that Ukraine is probably producing artillery pieces, on its own, faster than Europe and the United States combined. By and large, the days of shell shortages are over, although the Ukrainian gunners still don’t have nearly enough shell to fire on everything the drone spot.

Reports from the front are, the Ukrainian and Russian artillery are at parity; the Russians still seem to have more tubes and shells but both sides say the Ukrainians have better range and more accuracy.

This is a very different situation from summer-fall 2022, when the ZSU was completely outclassed in artillery. Image of a Bohdan gun.

The 70mm Guided Rocket Deal

This is a link to an article KP did this week about how planets and national governments are aligning to place a lot more 70mm rockets, many of them guided, in the hands of the ZSU. This is one of several responses in progress to rising numbers of Russian Shaheds. I’ve included an image of a Ukrainian An-28 passenger plane currently used as a Shahed interceptor. I am not clear if they have rockets hung on the wings or the crew chief is firing a shotgun out a window, but in any case, 59 claimed kills is 59 claimed kills.

Some More Russian Economic Stats

The Kremlin has a plan to pound the Ukrainians into submission, but I’m not sure the Kremlin plan is taking into account the Russians. Historically, the Russian populace does not like to put up with falling living standards and a war that is unwinnable. Here are some stats this week from Russian economic watch platforms, as I understand, for the last nine months:

Construction – sharply down.

Coal – $2.75 billion lost in the past quarter, mines closing.

Metallurgy – Bankruptcy moratorium, unofficial layoffs (undetermined unpaid leave, etc.).

Railroad (Russia’s biggest employer) – Employees must take three paid days off a month.

Non-defense production – Down 5.4% since the beginning of the year.

Overdue wages – Up by 3.3 times.

Cement – sector is in the red and contracting.

Plus, third quarter data, the Russian Central Bank registered incoming payments down 8.1% in July, 7.3% in third quarter. Over the second quarter, shrinking state receipts were in almost all federal districts. Sharp declines were from external trade (in other words, energy sales) 10% and investment 9.2%. The steepest declines were in investment demand, 13.2%, meaning construction of buildings and engineering structures, and production of other transport vehicles and equipment. All this is from a government-affiliated think tank called CMAKS.

My point would be, this is a wartime economy, and most of those sectors should be booming; there is in war nearly bottomless demand for metals, coal, railroad, and labor. The Russian wartime economy by these numbers is contracting, you can’t read the data any other way.

LATER ADDITION: Workers Strike, Threaten Suicide, Beg to be Paid

This is in a place called Lunechorsk near the Chinese border, Maritime provinces. It seems that workers at a local heating plant haven’t been paid in weeks, and they have announced they are going on strike. Reportedly, hundreds of welders, electricians, installers, and maintenance staff. They’re refusing to go home until they’re paid. News report (I saw it in UNIAN) says they are threatening suicide. I normally wouldn’t pass something like this on unchecked, but UNIAN is pretty reliable.

I think we all can agree that unpaid workers on strike, in an energy grid state facility, is not a sign that all is well in the Russian economy. Image, again probable but unconfirmed.

The Bloody and Historical Iknerman, Er, “Shampan” Heights

I direct your attention to the grid 44.6012390474306, 33.59972343976277 and attached photograph, which was made public by the Ukrainian partisan group Atesh on Friday, documenting, they say, the presence of a Russian S-400 anti-aircraft radar atop what is commonly called Shampan (Champagne) Mountain, to the south of the Crimean port city Sevastopol.

Atesh spots have frequently been followed up by HUR strikes by missile, drone, or saboteur group, so probably the sighting is credible, but that’s not the point of this factoid; but it is a reason to publish a picture of the radar.

The point is that this is exactly the same ground over which, on Nov. 5, 1854, a major battle was fought between British forces holding the heights and threatening, over time, to use them to bombard Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol Harbor, and the Imperial Russian Army, which wanted the British to go away and leave Russia’s warships alone.

There was a British Foot Brigade and a Guards Brigade atop the heights, and also French Zouaves. They were heavily outnumbered, but they held their ground, inflicting losses at a 5-1 rate. Sevastopol fell to Allied forces a year later. So that’s a pretext for a highly accurate artistic rendition of some British Guardsmen atop the Inkerman heights. I am confident it looked pretty much just like that.

Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

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