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Tangible Panic Grows in Ukraine Amid Donbass-front Collapse

Each paragraph below is illustrated on the original, with explanatory sources – quotes, videos, maps )

Simplicius, Aug 29, 2024  https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-82824-tangible-panic-grows?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=148194067&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email—

Ukraine is slowly descending into a panic regarding the collapse of the Donbass front, and in fact that collapse is seemingly accelerating. Some semblance of a normalcy bias continues to grip the more obdurate observers, but the keen-eyed are seeing the writing on the wall.

Head of the top Ukrainian channel “Deepstate UA”—which is basically the Ukrainian ‘Rybar’—calls the situation complete chaos:

Arestovich wrote a long post on his official account where he called the situation around Pokrovsk an “operational crisis”.

Rada deputy Goncharenko was beside himself, calling the situation catastrophic. He added that after Pokrovsk, the road to the entire Dnieper will be wide open:

It’s almost pointless even updating the exact captures and advances anymore because right now they’re simply happening so fast that within hours of the Sitrep’s release, the information is already obsolete, and Russians have advanced even more. But suffice it to say, this time there were even several major captures in areas other than Pokrovsk.

Russian forces captured the remainder of Konstantinovka on the Ugledar line:

Ugledar is now becoming in danger of being surrounded for the AFU in the near future.

Ukrainian military channel:

Then Russians captured most of Grodovka, after having just entered it days ago:

At this pace, it will be captured in the next day or two it seems.

After capturing New York, they’ve already entered the next settlement north of it, Nelipovka. And nearby, they’ve advanced deeper into Toretsk, gaining hundreds of meters inside the important city.

As of now, they’re mere kilometers from Pokrovsk, and right at the outskirts of its neighboring city of Mirnograd:

Nearby, they’ve now entered Selidov for the first time, and are already working through it:

Another Ukrainian account:

“Battles for Selidove have begun! The enemy is actively pushing our defenses on the eastern outskirts of the city, the fighting continues in the area of ​​the stadium and the park, slowly moving towards the high-rises, also the podars are trying to level the front and are starting to press from Mykhailivka to the south and push from the highway in the east. The same squeeze situation occurred in New York.”

In light of the ongoing collapse, the potential for dangerous escalation rises because Zelensky gets increasingly desperate to engineer some kind of black swan event that could overturn the table and upend events.

With this in mind there continues to be a slew of rumors for what Zelensky’s next move might be. For instance, there continue to be reports of AFU preparations on the Zaporozhye front:

There is some credence to the above given that in the past few days the Russian airforce has carried out at least 2 separate air strikes along the Black Sea toward Odessa—one was at Snake Island, and another at oil platforms just east of there which Ukrainian GUR was using to stage landings toward Crimea.

This is roughly how Zelensky’s potential plan is meant to play out:

A simultaneous mass landing by special forces around the Kinburn Spit area to harass the ‘rears’ of Russia’s Dnieper grouping, while other amphibious forces directly strike at the Energodar plant and then the main logistics force tries to wrap around from Zaporozhye city along the river to connect with them.

No one quite knows why this happened, but there are a few potential conjectures:

1. Lukashenko foresees Ukraine attempting to create some provocation as part of the earlier mentioned ‘black swan’ to involve NATO forces, and is taking appropriate deterrence measures
2. Lukashenko is trying to help Russian troops by pinning or ‘fixing’ Ukrainian border guards along the Belarus border, given that Ukraine was said to have removed many of the border forces to use them in Kursk
3. Least likely: Russia and Belarus plan some kind of joint final decapitation invasion to finish off the war

Most likely it’s a combination of 1 and 2.

Partly related to the heightening tensions, we now have a new very interesting statement by Lavrov which appears to vindicate my recent reporting about potential changes to the Russian nuclear doctrine, given the West’s unceasing escalations against Russia’s red lines.

There’s an undercurrent of tension now running through events as other somewhat peculiar happenings have gone on. For instance, Belarus suddenly moved a lot of forces to the Ukrainian border again, and for the first time they appear to have a tactical symbol of a ‘B’ on them, as if they are preparing for direct combat:

August 30, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war