SUMMARY SEPTEMBER 21st, 2026

Politics  - Duma Election - Putin’s party wins…

- Trump Zelensky to meet in New York at UNGA

Combat Ops - Drone and Missile Strikes continue 

- Ukrainian gains on the ground

Politics 

In Russia’s first parliamentary election since 2021, Putin's party has won. With 95% of the vote counted, Putin’s “United Russia” party has won 57.85% of the vote, with the Communist Party finishing 2nd with 13.87% of the vote. Other parties noted were: LDPR 8.65%, New People 7.52%, A Just Russia 5.08% and other  5.33%.

Voter turnout was 59.32%

Results were pretty much as predicted. 

It should be noted that there has been a good deal of conjecture that there’s going to be a large-scale mobilization after the Duma elections finish, with one claim suggesting that Russian army leadership wants 800,000 more troops. How exactly Russia could quickly train 800,000 troops (normal call-up is on the order of 300,000 troops) isn’t clear, but a call-up of an additional 500,000 troops would present a training and supply and logistics problem for the Russian army and a host of tactical targets for the Ukrainian drone and missile forces.

President Trump will meet with President Zelenskyy in the 21st run New York as they both traveled to the city for the UN General Assembly. Zelenskyy commented that “There is diplomatic momentum.”

Meanwhile, Presidential Advisor Kushner noted last week that the three sides are “getting closer,” and noted that there is general agreement on all issues except territorial ones.

The House passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on September 16th, and President Trump signed the act into law on the 18th.

Among other things, the law gives the President authority to impose tariffs of up to 100%  on the five largest importers of Russian oil and natural gas.

The State Department has approved the sale of $2.68 billion of air defense weapons and systems to Ukraine.

The sale includes S-300 Clone missiles and GAM-67 missiles, both of which are a bit of misnomers. The “S-300 Clone” is a new missile that can be launched from a Russian built S-300 launcher, and used for both in a surface-to-air and surface-to-surface mode.

The GAM-67 was a designator for a system developed in the 1970s, but this is a new, “medium range” missile, also designed to be used on Russian launchers, with a surface-to-surface anti-radiation capability (targets radars).  

Ukraine’s Energy Minister Shmyhal reports that Ukraine is in the process of building or repairing 10 GW of electric power capacity, while also upgrading their grid to work better with Europe’s grid. He did not provide a time line, but there is nearly universal recognition that Ukrainian civilians are going to face a difficult winter.

Ground Operations

Overall, the last 10 days have seen some real changes on the ground, but in some sense it is both “more and less.”

Ukrainian forces operating north-east of Slovyansk have, since perhaps the last week of August (with both sides, it is never clear when an operation began, and after the fact the dates are usually moved around, adjusted for maximum political and propaganda effect) Ukrainian forces operating south-east of Borova have been attacking Russian positions in the box north of the Donets River, west of the Zherebets River, and east of the Nitrius River (some Russian forces were actually west of the Nitrius as well). Overall, this is about 12 x 12 miles in size. Including the terrain just west of the Nitrius, Ukrainian forces have now cleared much of the roughly 100 square miles of terrain and are nearing the west bank of the Zherebets River.

At the same time, some Ukrainian reports are clearly contradicting other Ukrainian reports, and there appears to remain several pockets of Russian troops inside the former salient.

The Ukrainian attack included “flooding” the box with FPV drones as well as electronic warfare systems (jammers) to deny Russian drones as much as possible. In addition, they took advantage of what has been noted in the past: the Ukrainians are more adept at rapid movements and exploration of seams between enemy units.

That said, it is best not to read too much into this. 

The Russian army is deliberately slow in response, it prevents making errors of commission. This means the Ukrainian forces can find a gap and push into it and exploit it. But these gains are relatively small and when they run up against the developed Russian defensive positions they are stopped.

Also, reading between the lines, it appears that the Ukrainian forces took serious losses from the Russian fiber optic drones which are, obviously, not readily jammed.

This Russian position - salient - was sitting just north-east of Slovyansk and as such represented a real threat to that city. Russian forces pushing in from the north and east, while also pushing into the Kramatorsk from due east and through Kostiantinivka and Druzhivka in the south, placed the fortress belt at risk. Relieving the pressure on the north of Slovyansk helps to stiffen that defense.

But it mischaracterizes the war to suggest that the Russian forces were engaged in a wide flanking movement on the fortress belt, a la Guderian sweeping through Luxembourg and flanking the Maginot line. The Russian army isn’t built for that. This is a war of attrition and the Russian army is built for, and fights, a slow, deliberate, bloody attrition fight.

Elsewhere, fighting continues along most of the line. And there are several areas where fighting is well above the normal intensity, though still difficult to quantify. 

North-east of Kharkiv - in the north-east “corner” of Ukraine, Russian forces are pushing in from the east and from the north, in an attempt to cut off that section of the country. Reporting is not definitive but there appears to be a Ukrainian brigade (with perhaps 2,000 troops) in the area. Reports are again contradictory, with claims ranging from “all 2,000 have been encircled” to “500 Ukrainian troops in the pocket, 1,500 behind them, and their GLOC in and out of the pocket firmly in Ukrainian control.”

This last claim is probably closest to the truth right now, and Ukrainian forces, aided by, reportedly, heavy (heavier than normal) FPV drone use, are containing the Russians. Russian commitment of additional assets into the area would seem to be the key consideration. If they do so, the Ukrainian forces have few reserves to flow into that region and that would lead to another slow grind and gradual withdrawal.

However, there is no indication, given current force lay-down, that there would be a collapse, leaving a Ukrainian element trapped in the pocket. Rather, this is likely to be another long, slow squeeze, and commitment of additional forces by one side or the other being the deciding factor.

In and around Kostiantinivka the painfully slow Russian grind continues, and Russian forces now appear to have penetrated - probes and squad sized infiltration elements - nearly all of that city and Russian forces probably have real control of more than half of that city.

On the southern front, Russian forces continue to infiltrate into the eastern and western edges of Orikhiv, while also attempting to cut the major GLOCs into that city. Ukrainian forces report that additional Russian forces are flowing into the southern front, but that has not been confirmed.

Air and Maritime Operations

Both sides continue daily long range missile and drone strikes against energy infrastructure and logistics infrastructure targets. 

Without getting into a daily counter for the last 2 weeks, averages are running perhaps 150 - 200 drones and cruise missiles per day, with occasionally 500 or more drones and missiles fired into the enemy cities. Both sides are taking a good deal of damage, though it is difficult to escape the assessment that, as one analysts noted, it is a race to the bottom and Ukraine’s ocean isn’t as deep. 

It is also of note that Russian forces are increasingly using jet powered long-range drones and, as these are more difficult to shoot down, more get through.

In addition, Russian production of ballistic missiles continues to slowly inch up, reportedly to 100 per month as of this month, and the Patriot system is the only one that has shown a reliable capability against ballistic missiles.

 Economic Reporting

         Feb22  May8 Jun8 Jul9 Aug7 Sep4 Sep8 Sep21

Brent      94.71   100.50 93.82 77.93 81.75 93.69 98.19 99.49

WTI     92.10   94.91 90.59 73.11 76.66 89.17 93.28 95.10

NG       3.97      2.79           3.14 3.12           2.64  2.95 2.95 2.84

Wheat     8.52            6.14   5.82          6.06 6.35          7.45 7.46 7.28

Ruble     85         74.26 73.10 76.31 82.61 86.38 86.21 83.75

Hryvnia 28.6        43.90 44.64 44.51 44.73 44.52 44.63 44.72

Urals 91.66 92.56 86.33 57.80 79.19 86.70 89.44 115.44

ESPO 94.52 105.56 95.51 73.53 78.79 94.52 98.44 126.03

Sokol 99.31 95.96 89.90 71.56 77.42 88.94 94.09 103.83

Thoughts

Last week there was another body exchanged with Russian forces turning over 252 bodies and Ukrainian forces Turing over 23 Russian bodies. This brings the total since January 2025 to 20,813 Ukrainian bodies returned by Russia, and 424 Russian bodies returned by Ukraine.

Initially, the disparity in bodies returned was ascribed to the fact that Russians were advancing and therefore picking up bodies as they fell, but there were no Russian bodies falling offering an opportunity for Ukrainians to pick them up.

But, since March Ukraine has been making some advances, yet there are very few bodies being picked up. There is no explanation given.

Meanwhile, a new report is out from the Ukrainian General Staff (UGS) on Russian casualties. The UGS claim is that Russia has suffered some 1.5 million casualties, and they note that this 1% of the Russian population.

No Ukrainian casualty numbers are reported; the Ukrainian government does not give casualty figures, though it has admitted that there were 51,000 KIAs as of early last year.

Simply put, given the nature of the war, the two sides using nearly identical technology, and nearly identical tactics, in very slow moving lines, it is difficult to conceive how casualty counts could be widely different- the UGS claims 8 to 1.

As it is, there is one independent group - Mediazone - that has a well established methodology for estimating Russian casualties and their numbers have been tracked closely to various figures that have leaked out from time to time though Russian courses. Said differently, I trust their numbers. Mediazone places the Russian KIA count - bottom - at 258,000. There is clearly an error rate to that, which could place it as high as 40% higher, or 350,000 KIA.

So, how many total casualties?

Medical personnel on both sides have commented that perhaps twice that many are wounded (though this number has recently been questioned by senior officers on the UGS), but that 70% of WIA return to full duty with 30 days (and 30% are assumed to not return to active duty). Additionally, casualty counts also include missing, prisoners and deserters. The missing and prisoner numbers are relatively low, perhaps 10,000 per side. The desertion numbers are known.

All compiled together yields the following numbers for Russia:

KIA / Severely Wounded / Other WIA / Missing + POW / Deserters

350,000 / 200,000 / 500,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 = 1,160,000

It is worth noting that most estimates for Ukrainian KIA, outside of Kyiv provided numbers, are in the range of 200,000 - 300,000 KIA (some are higher), which would give the following numbers (best case and the 2nd case), note that the desertion figure is known):

Best case:

200,000 / 140,000 / 360,000 / 10,000 / 300,000 = 1,010,000

2nd case:

300,000 / 180,000 / 420,000 / 10,000 / 300,000 = 1,210,000

These numbers represents 3 - 4% of the Ukrainian population.

v/r pete