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Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,638: What intelligence officials say about Putin’s plans. A pessimistic, optimistic and realistic scenario for winter
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Russia deployed an entire arsenal of weapons against Kyiv, killing at least 13 people.
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Do not expect any negotiations: the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence predicts what comes next.
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The situation at the front depends on whether Russia launches mobilisation and how much help Putin receives from Kim.
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An analyst outlines pessimistic, optimistic and realistic scenarios for the coming winter.
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Putin’s goal has not changed: he wants to seize Donbas at any cost.
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What Ukrainians will focus on next.
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Map of the day: the scale of attacks on Wildberries.
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Videos of the day: Russians go underground, human safari in Kherson, a fighter-drone altitude record.
The information in this text is a summary of events on Wednesday (19 August). The situation may have changed in the meantime.
There will be more tragic nights like this one. Explosions shook Ukraine’s capital during a massive missile attack overnight into Thursday. Russia launched at least two dozen cruise and ballistic missiles, including against a children’s hospital, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.
A whole arsenal of Russian weapons was directed at Kyiv: from Oniks and Zircon supersonic missiles, Iskander-M and S-400 missiles, Kh-101 and Kalibr cruise missiles, as well as Iskander-K and Kh-59 missiles, to Banderol hybrid drones.
Kyiv faces a critical shortage of missiles for Patriot systems and is unable to cope with Russian ballistic missiles. The situation is so bad that Ukraine’s air force stopped publishing statistics on whether its air defence succeeds or fails against such attacks.
There will only be more such attacks, with horrific consequences, in Ukrainian cities as winter approaches. Despite mounting domestic problems and Ukrainian pressure causing serious difficulties for Russia’s economy, Vladimir Putin is not preparing to pursue peace negotiations.
He will continue terrorising Ukrainian civilians and waging an attritional war which, according to some voices, is turning into total war. The Russian dictator also dreams of conquering the whole of Donbas this winter — something he has failed to do for more than 12 years.
After the Russian air strike.
Source: DSNS Kyiv
Several analysts are convinced that this is how events will develop, as is one of Ukraine’s best-informed figures, Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, acting director of the HUR military intelligence agency. Together with the Ukrainian website RBC-Ukraine, we take a closer look at his forecast, alongside analyst Valerii Vins of the Kyiv-based think-tank, the Institute for European Security Studies (IESS).
So what does HUR’s second-in-command say? According to Skibitskyi, nothing indicates that Putin is ready to cease fire at the front and begin peace negotiations. He will continue the offensive in eastern Ukraine and intensify attacks on Ukrainian cities, seeking to destroy as much as possible — not only energy infrastructure, but also heating plants, waterworks and every possible logistics hub, warehouse or filling station.
In short, everything that makes life more difficult for people in Ukraine.
According to analyst Vins, Ukraine is already de facto in a total war with Russia. “This winter, however, will be its culminating stress test. Russia will again use the cold as a weapon of mass destruction, shifting its focus from purely military targets to breaking the resilience of civilian society,” he told Denník N.
Yurii Fedorenko, commander of the Achilles BPA battalion of the 92nd Air Assault Brigade, summed it up for Unian by saying that a prolonged war was a key condition for Putin to retain his own power; he would try to frighten Ukrainians and drive them out of cities with missile terror this winter, while the only chance of ending the war was to force him to do so.
Russian journalist Mikhail Fishman also said that Putin was betting on the coming winter. “He still believes he is making rapid progress in Donbas. He was probably promised that he would conquer Donbas by the end of the year, and he probably believes it,” Fishman told Radio NV.
According to Skibitskyi of military intelligence, the extent to which Putin attempts to expand the offensive will also depend on whether he launches a new wave of Russian mobilisation, and how successful it is.
Its timing after the rigged September Duma elections has been speculated about throughout the summer, and reportedly no final decision has yet been taken.
In recent days, however, Russians have made record cash withdrawals, while long queues have reappeared at the border from Russia into Georgia, showing Russian fears about what is to come.
The mobilisation factor and assistance from North Korea. According to Skibitskyi, without full mobilisation — or a partial one, meaning a gradual and undeclared mobilisation — Russia will be unable to form new units, as battlefield losses exceed current recruitment. Should it nevertheless take place, the HUR officer did not rule out a new offensive from the north towards the Chernihiv and Kyiv regions.
