October 3rd, 2024 

Overall  

Ground Operations  - Russia takes Vuhledar

- Small Russian gains south-east of Pokrovsk

Politics - No Ukrainian Legion?

Weather

Kharkiv

73 and mostly cloudy. Mostly cloudy to cloudy through Tuesday. Daily lows near 50, daily highs in the 70s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Melitopol

73 and sunny, gusting near 20. Sunny or mostly sunny through the weekend. Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs in the 70s. Winds easterly, 5-15kts.

Kyiv

70 and cloudy, gusting over 20. Cloudy until Tuesday, rain on Saturday and Sunday. Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs in the 60s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Ground Operations

Kursk Salient

Ukrainian forces remain on the attack outside of Veseloye (west of the salient), but there was no confirmed gain of terrain.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces were active around the main salient but there were no confirmed gains or losses of terrain on either side.

North of Kharkiv 

Russian forces continued operations in the two small incursions north of Kharkiv, but there were no confirmed changes in the line. Russian forces did claim some small gains around the town of Starytsya (about 7 miles west-south-west of Vovchansk) and Zelene (about 7 miles east-south-east of Hlyboke, but again, neither gain can be confirmed.

North of the Donets River

Russian forces have made gains outside of Novovodyane (2 miles north of Makiivka, on the Zherebets River), and Russian forces in Makiivka, having cleared that town, are now pressing south-westward toward the Oskil River. 

Bakhmut

North-east of Bakhmut imagery confirmed Russian gains near Spirne (south-east of Siversk), and unconfirmed reporting suggests that Russian forces have taken control of a town just north of Siversk (Verkhnokamyianske).

Fighting continues west of Bakhmut but there were no confirmed gains in the area and the various reporting streams present conflicting positions and no real means of sorting it out as to how far the Russians have pushed west from the canal or whether they have gained any ground at all in the last several days south of Chasiv Yar.

Fighting continues in and around Toretsk (west of Horlivka)  but again there were no confirmed changes in the front line over the past 24 hours.

Donetsk City

Russian forces continue to grind generally westward, with confirmed gains in the vicinity of Hrodivka (about 5 miles east of Pokrovsk) and Tsukuryne - about 12 miles south-east of Pokrovsk, but more significantly right now, the town immediately south of Selydove. If the Russians can either take Selydove, or isolate it and move around it, they will be able to make some more rapid gains west of that town and move forces into positions about 5 miles due south of Pokrovsk.

Fighting also continued further south, west of Heorhivka, but there were no confirmed gains or losses of terrain.

Russian forces appear to moving out of Vuhledar and there is a renewed effort to the north-west from Vodyane, but there were no confirmed gains.

Southern Ukraine

Skirmishes were reported across southern Ukraine and along the Dnepr River, but there no confirmed gains or losses.

Air Operations 

Security Service of Ukraine used drones to attack Borisoglebsk airfield, Voronezh Oblast, there was no reports yet citing possible damage to the airfield..

A Patriot battery has arrived in Ukraine from Romania.

Politics and Diplomacy

Poland’s Defense Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz commented that the creation of a “Ukrainian Legion” is being questioned after a very poor response this week to the initial recruiting.

Active recruiting began this week in Poland and across Europe, an effort to get some of the more than 800,000 military age Ukrainians living in Europe to volunteer to join a unit, train in Poland and then return to Ukraine to fight.

But as of this morning, only 138 applications had been received, and 58 other men had contacted the recruiting office on line, a total of only 196 men. The hope had been for  enough men to form at least several brigades (roughly 3,000 men each), provide them 5 weeks of training in Poland and then move them into Ukraine.

The new NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, made his first visit to Ukraine and met with President Zelenskyy this morning. Of particular note in their talks is the more expeditious delivery of weapons already promised too Ukraine.

Romania’s Agriculture Minister has asked the European Commission to ban imports of poultry products from Ukraine.

"There is a need for the European Commission to intervene on Ukrainian imports of eggs and poultry meat, given that our farmers are subject to certain conditions for poultry farming that entail much higher costs than those of farmers outside the European Union.”

Economic Reporting

Feb 22   Mar 7   Jun10-22Jun8-23 Jun7 Jul9 Aug8 Sep9 Oct2 Oct3

Brent      94.71      119.50 120.90    75.58      80.06 85.19 78.02 71.74 75.80 75.70

WTI     92.10      123.80 119.50  71.29      75.81 81.73 75.03 68.37 72.18 72.02

NG       3.97       4.45     8.41      2.15      2.82 2.38 2.08 2.20 2.97 2.97

Wheat     8.52       12.94    10.71    6.17       6.40 5.71 5.38 5.67 5.99 6.15

Ruble     85         145.70  58.48     82.59      88.77 88.18 86.98 90.75 94.56 95.11

Hryvnia Pre Oct 2023 fixed at 36.4 40.78 40.89 41.27 41.22

Urals 56.56    67.61 67.61 72.14 78.83 69.27 68.85

ESPO   67.02      65 77 77

Sokol 70.82 66.23 68.14 68.12

Thoughts

The Ukrainian General Staff (UGS) admitted that Vuhledar had been taken by Russian forces and stated that Ukrainian forces (the 72nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade)  had been allowed to withdraw to save lives of the troops. They also noted the huge numbers of Russian losses associated with taking the town.

Not to be too harsh here, as everyone does this, but the UGS has used this defense each time they have been pushed out of a town: the Russians took huge casualties. The most accurate tracking of Russian casualties is from Mediazone - without getting into a great deal of detail they track thousands of web sites and blogs and local newspapers and cemeteries etc,  across Russia and have a very granular counting that places the Russian KIA as of last week at 71,000 with an upper boundary estimate of 120,000. My estimate, which is not as detailed, places Russian losses (KIA) at 95,000. Wounded runs about 3.5 to 4 times KIA.

But where does that place Ukraine? Three data points: In the middle of summer 2022 (more than 2 years ago) the Ukrainian government commented that in the first several months of the war they had lost 13,000 KIA. They later withdrew that figure and replace it with no figure, which lends some credence to the idea that it probably had some merit. 

Late last year President Zelenskyy commented that there were 31,000 KIA. Virtually everyone recognized that number was low, kept low probably by doing what every country does (look at US losses in Vietnam): carefully defining “killed in action” to keep that number lower. (One NATO ally - I forget which one right now - who has been involved in a number of UN and allied operations around the world, so defined KIA that they rarely had any, no matter what. Soldiers died of all sorts of things, but they were not, technically, “killed in action.”)

Less than 2 weeks ago a member of the Verkhovna Rada commented that in each of the last 2 x 12 month periods there have been 19,000 KIAs. So, 19,000 + 19,000 + 13,000 = 51,000

And last week Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs commented that there are 55,000 missing persons, that “most of them are military personnel," and most of them are dead. So, even using numbers that are clearly, carefully crafted, you can make an easy argument that there are more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers (51,000 + 55,000 = 106,000)

This is also reflected in the fact that the average age of the Ukrainian army year ago was between 42 and 43; it is now estimated to be 45.

Add in the hesitancy of the 800,000+ Ukrainian males in Europe, noted above.

Ukraine has a population of 34 million, and Russia has a population of 147 million - more than 4 times as large, and Ukraine is taking roughly the same number of casualties (perhaps more)…

v/r pete