August 15th, 2025  

Politics  - Summit starts at 1530 EDT 

- POW exchange

Combat Ops - No significant changes on the ground 

Weather

Kharkiv

76 and partly cloudy. Partly cloudy to sunny for the next week. Daily lows near 60, daily highs in the 80. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Melitopol

78 and partly cloudy, gusting to 20. Sunny for the next week. Daily lows in the low 60s, daily highs in the upper 80s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

75 and partly cloudy. Mostly sunny through Monday, then several days partly cloudy. Daily lows in the mid 50s, highs in the upper 70s to low 80s. Winds westerly, 5-10kts.

Politics 

From President Trump:

I had a wonderful talk with the highly respected President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The purpose of the call was to thank him for the release of 16 prisoners. We are also discussing the release of 1,300 additional prisoners. Our conversation was a very good one. We discussed many topics, including President Putin's visit to Alaska. I look forward to meeting President Lukashenko in the future. Thank you for your attention

to this matter!

President Trump commented that he believes President Putin is ready to end the war but a peace deal will require a second meeting which would need to involve President Zelenskyy.

Per SecState Rubio, President Trump hopes to halt the fighting, but a solution to the war will take longer.

The UAE oversaw another POW exchange, with 84 Prisoners exchanged by each country.

Reuters reports commercial satellite imagery at the Pankovo test site near Arkhangelsk suggests an imminent test of the Burevestinik [Storm Petrel] 9M730 (NATO codename SSC-X-9 Skyfall) nuclear powered cruise missile. 

The Russians have tried to test this missile several times but have not had great success. It is a large missile (40 feet log), and would be armed with a nuclear weapon if deployed.

The US had a similar program, Project Pluto, begun in 1957, with engines tested between 1961 and 1964, but it was cancelled in July 1964.

Germany announced $500 million in aid to Ukraine, purchasing weapons from the US to satisfy the the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL - got to have an acronym).

A report from the USAID inspector general noted that AID did not monitor the use of 5,175 Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine and that “nearly half” ended up in Russian controlled territory.

Ground Operations

SUMY AND KHARKIV OBLASTS

Fighting continues near Tetkino (a Russian town just across the border, north-west from Sumy City), but there are no confirmed changes in the front line.

North of Sumy city Ukrainian forces pushed further into Kindrativka and appear to have control of most of that town. Other reports suggest Ukrainian gains into Andriivka, but neither of these movements have been confirmed. 

The Ukrainian General Staff and President Zelenskyy have commented that Russian forces are shifting out of the Sumy - Kursk area and are being moved south, presumably to exploit gains, seams, and weak spots in line in the Donetsk area. As reminder, some 11,000 North Korean troops are said to be currently conducting training in Russia and will be sent to the Kursk Oblast in the near future.

North of Kharkiv fighting continues in Vovchansk and Synelnykove, but there were no confirmed changes in the line. 

NORTH OF THE DONETS

Fighting continues along most of the Oskil River, and in the general Kupyansk area but there are no confirmed changes in the front lines. Russian drone strikes continue  on the Ground Lines of Communication GLOC) into Kupyansk.

  Further south, imagery confirmed that Ukrainian forces near Torske (near the southern end of the Zherebets river), have pushed into the south end of that town.

Further west, there are unconfirmed reports that Russian forces made gains around Sardine and Shandryholove. Unconfirmed reports suggest Russian forces are reinforcing in this area. 

BAKHMUT - TORETSK - POKROVSK

There are reports of Russian gains north-east, east and south-east of Siversk, to include more gains just north of the Donets in the Serebrianske forest, but none of these are confirmed. Siversk itself is said to be essentially deserted (population 10,800 in 2022) and the town is now in ruins.

Fighting continues on the  west edges of Chasiv Yar and Stupochky, and into Predtechyne, but there were no confirmed changes.

Fighting continues west of Toretsk and around the Kleban Byk Reservoir, with Russians continuing to claim that they control most of the area but multiple Ukrainian elements remain east of the reservoir and they continue to hold and fight in most of the towns in the area.

West of Toretsk, west of the T0504 roadway, and north and north-east of Pokrovsk, the Russian salient remains, even as Ukrainian forces reportedly are moving into the area. Ukrainian forces (the 1st Azov Corps) have reached the front line and it is apparently holding, and the UGS is reporting that the situation has “stabilized.”

At the same time, there are no clear indications that the Russians have reinforced their positions in the salient, which would suggest the salient is being held together by a paper thin line. Obviously, Russian forces would want to flow forces into the area as well as engineering units to dig new defensive positions. It is worth noting that much of the salient is west of the last Ukrainian trenches and defensive hard points, so Russian forces don’t have anything to fall in on (nor do the Ukrainian units), and the engineering units will want to move up quickly. 

For the last 3 years Ukrainian forces have been faster at moving forces to exploit a gap or plug a gap; Russian forces have been faster at bringing up engineering units to construct defensive positions. Presumably we will see in the next week or two who is more proficient. But the fact remains that the UGS insists this is nothing more than a collection of small (4 - 6 man) recon teams and nothing else; if so, this should not last long. But if these are bigger units…

All that said, there is an unconfirmed report, which would be of note if it proves true, that Russian elements are active just east of  Novooleksandrivka (7 miles north-west of Pokrovsk).

And, there are reports of multiple Russian fire teams (3-5 troops) probing into southern Pokrovsk.

Fighting also continues west and southwest of Pokrovsk, to include the north bank of the Vovcha River out west to Filiia, but there were no confirmed changes in the line.

SOUTHERN UKRAINE

  South of the Vovcha Russian forces continue to press westward and imagery confirmed gains on the ground west of Voskresenk and Mallivka and the Russian MOD claimed the Russian forces pushed into the nearby town of Oleksandrohrad and are now in control of that town - this has not been confirmed.

Air Operations

During the night of August 14th-August 15th Russian forces launched 2 x Iskander ballistic missiles and 97 x Shahed drones into Ukrainian air space. The UAF claimed it shot down, or defeated by EW, 63 Shahed drones.

Damage from drone strikes was reported in Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy oblast; at least one of the ballistic missiles struck Dnipro city.

RuAF tacair struck 4 Ukrainian towns.

Ukrainian forces claim that Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in Samara (450 miles south-east of Moscow), but this has not been confirmed.

During the night of August 13th-August 14th Russian forces launched 2 x S-300 ballistic missiles and 45 x Shahed drones into Ukrainian air space. The UAF claimed it shot down, or defeated by EW, 24 Shahed drones.

Damage from drone strikes was reported in Chernihiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts. 

RuAF tacair struck 10 Ukrainian towns.

Economic Reporting

Feb22   May8 Jun9 July8 Aug8 Aug14 Aug15

Brent      94.71       61.93 66.80 70.44 66.90 66.47 66.22

WTI     92.10    59.00 64.89 68.65 64.29 63.48 63.29

NG       3.97          3.64 3.69 3.35 3.06 2.82 2.96

Wheat     8.52           5.34 5.49 5.49 5.18 5.04 5.07

Ruble     85          82.45 79.27 78.47 79.74 79.62 80.20

Hryvnia 36.4 41.55 41.55 41.80 41.39 41.44 41.25

Urals 54.13 60.84 64.07 63.17 61.62 63.49

ESPO 48.90 63.97 71.58 68.63 67.83 69.04

Sokol 57.39 61.51 64.38 62.57 62.44 63.02

Thoughts

The other day ZeroHedge ran an article that discussed how the Ukrainian army has, over time become less and less nimble, that it has become “a little Soviet Army.” More to the point, it is a “Little Soviet army fighting a Big Soviet army” and therefore is certain to lose.

I have sometimes quoted Field Marshal Moltke's (the Elder) warning that “Errors in tactics can be corrected in the next battle, errors in strategy can only be corrected in the next war.” Russia began this war with a strategic error, based on a faulty net assessment, they committed a small force (fewer than 200,000 troops) to conquer 40 million people and 225,000 square miles (almost as big as Texas). And while they made significant gains across southern Ukraine, they were well defeated in the north, and overextended themselves in the south.

Over the course of 2022, as they lost their positions in the north, and those west of the Dnepr, the Russians changed their strategy to a grinding war of attrition. And at this point Ukraine made a strategic error. While Russia “settled down” into the attrition model, Ukraine accepted the change and, in essence, agreed to a war of attrition, refusing to give ground, to maneuver, to use use a mobil defense - defense in depth, rather than a static, hold the line defense; after all, the policy coming out of Kyiv was to not yield ground.

War is politics and the politicians get to decide. But in this case they have accepted a war they cannot win, simply based on numbers: a war of attrition with a country 5 times larger is a poor choice. It represents a true strategic mistake and strategic mistakes normally have to be “paid for.”

That said, there are distressing numbers that have been reported over the last few days that suggest that the Ukrainian desertion problem is growing. As of last December (end of November 2024) a bit more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been charged with desertion. At that time the rate of desertion was reportedly 6,000 per month.

But there is a report that suggests since January 1st this year there have been 125,000 desertions, bringing the total number of desertions to 225,000 (Russia has reportedly had fewer than 20,000 desertions). If that number is accurate, and there is reason to believe it is, and it is added to the number of casualties that they (the Ukrainians) have probably suffered in the last 7 months, then they are losing people faster than they are bringing them in (27,000 per month). 

Which leaves the question: are the units on the line in Donetsk already hollow? And if so, how long can they hold? And do the Russians know this?

v/r pete