Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - September 8

The last couple of days of advances have been crazy. UA army spirit is at its highest in months and Russians are demoralised. Calls for RU backups which aren’t coming.

It’s very uplifting to see. Loads of liberation videos floating around if you want a bit of heartwarming action in all this senseless violence.

Analysis: Ukraine blindsides Russia with northeastern thrust at supply hub (Reuters)

The surprise advance was Ukraine's most dramatic of the war so far and came in northeastern Kharkiv region hundreds of kilometres from the southern Black Sea region of Kherson where the brunt of a Ukrainian counteroffensive was expected.

[…]

After days of withholding battlefield developments, Ukraine said on Thursday that its forces had burst through Russian lines in the Kharkiv region that borders Russia, advancing up to 50 km (30 miles) and capturing dozens of settlements.

"It's an opportunistic attack that's really caught the Russian forces by surprise. It could actually become something quite significant if the Ukrainians are able to push on and take the (city) of Kupiansk," said Neil Melvin of the RUSI think tank.

Kupiansk is a rail hub on the way to the key Russian-held outpost of Izium from where Moscow has anchored some of its main operations in the partially-occupied eastern region of Donetsk whose full capture the Kremlin has prioritised.

Civilians were being evacuated from Kupiansk and Izium, a Russian-appointed local official, Vitaly Ganchev, said after Russia's defence ministry posted footage of trucks and armoured vehicles it said were heading to the Kharkiv region.

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War predicted Kyiv's forces would likely recapture Kupiansk within 72 hours.

"That (gain) would then threaten an encirclement of Russian forces in Izium, so it could become quite a blow for the Russians in Donetsk (region). There is a chance to have a strategic breakthrough on the Donetsk front," Melvin said.

Russian grip on northeast Ukraine collapses after Kyiv severs supply line (Reuters)

Ukrainian officials stopped short of confirming they had recaptured Izium, but President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief of staff Andriy Yermak posted a photo of troops on its outskirts. Earlier, he tweeted an emoji of grapes. The city's name means "raisin".

Ukrainian forces appear to retake Kupiansk amid advances in north-east (The Guardian)

A local resident of Izium, who prefers to remain anonymous, told the Guardian that the Ukrainian troops had entered the city. Before that, “Russian occupying forces were rapidly withdrawing, leaving ammunition and equipment behind.”

Images flooding social media showed Ukrainian forces within the city of Izium and Russian observers of the conflict said there were initial reports Moscow’s army had already withdrawn.

[…]

Izium has for centuries been regarded as the gateway to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and, from there, to the Black Sea. The Russians called the area around it Izium passage.

Its strategic position has meant Izium has become a fierce battleground in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Moscow used it as a launching point for its assault against Ukrainian forces in Donbas. It fell fully to Russian forces on 1 April, trapping thousands of civilians in a city where as many as 80% of its residential buildings have been destroyed.

Moscow Municipal Lawmakers Demand Putin's Resignation
https://www.rferl.org/amp/moscow-municipal-lawmakers-demand-putin-resignation/32027762.html

Municipal deputies in the Moscow district of Lomonosovsky have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to resign, saying "everything went wrong" since the start of his second term and they believe a change of power is necessary for the sake of the country.

The deputies posted their protocol decision on the Lomonosovsky district's website, including a 30-minute video of their meeting on September 8.

In their appeal, the deputies emphasize that the aggressive rhetoric of Putin and his subordinates has thrown Russia back into the Cold War era. They disputed economic data showing a doubling of the country's GDP and said the minimum wage did not increase to the level declared by the government.

They also said smart and hard-working people have left Russia en masse, and there is no trace of the promised stability.

Addressing Putin directly, they said: "Your views, your management model are hopelessly outdated and impede the development of Russia and its human potential."

The three longest days of February. The beginning of the great war which no one thought would come

Interesting account of the days right before and the day of the invasion.

Geopolitics Decanted, a podcast often featuring Michael Kofman (a well regarded open source expert on Russia and the war), put out a double feature today.

Russian Northern Front Collapses: Latest on the Ukrainian Counteroffensive (recorded 10 September)

Like Ants to Wet Sugar: How Ukraine Won the Battle of Kharkiv

Amid Ukraine’s startling gains, liberated villages describe Russian troops dropping rifles and fleeing (Washington Post)

The residents were scared of the Russians, several village residents said. But they almost pitied them in their scramble to escape the recent Ukrainian onslaught.

Half of the soldiers fled in their vehicles in the first hours of the offensive, they said. Those stranded grew desperate. Some residents overheard their radio pleas to unit commanders for someone to come get them.

“They said, ‘You’re on your own,’ ” Matvienko recounted. “They came into our houses to take clothes so the drones wouldn’t see them in uniforms. They took our bicycles. Two of them pointed guns at my ex-husband until he handed them his car keys.”

Russian council faces dissolution after call for Putin's removal (Reuters)

A group of St Petersburg local politicians who called for President Vladimir Putin to be sacked over the war in Ukraine faces the likely dissolution of their district council following a judge's ruling on Tuesday, one of the deputies said.

Nikita Yuferev said the judge decided that a series of past council meetings had been invalid, paving the way for it to be broken up by the regional governor.

Another council member, Dmitry Palyuga, said the same court then fined him 47,000 roubles ($780) for "discrediting" the authorities by calling for Putin's removal. Court officials could not be reached by telephone for comment.

Four more members of the Smolninskoye local council are due to appear in court in the next two days.

Last week, a group of deputies from the council appealed to the State Duma to bring charges of state treason against Putin and strip him of power, citing a series of reasons including Russia's military losses in Ukraine and the damage to its economy from Western sanctions.

Another local deputy said 65 municipal representatives from St Petersburg, Moscow and several other regions had signed a petition she published on Monday calling for Putin's resignation.

While posing no current threat to Putin's grip on power, the moves mark rare expressions of dissent by elected representatives at a time when Russians risk heavy prison sentences for "discrediting" the armed forces or spreading "deliberately false information" about them.

A turning point in Ukraine leads to a turning point in Russia: Longtime Kremlin supporters are now calling the war a ‘disaster’

Ukraine war: Russians 'outnumbered 8-1' in counter-attack

Vitaly Ganchev told Russian TV that Ukraine's army had taken villages in the north and broken through to the Russian border.

(See map in the story.)

A wave of missile strikes on Sunday caused power cuts across the region.

The blackouts reportedly affected millions of people in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.

Ukraine's Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said the priority now was to secure the territorial gains made in a week of rapid advances in the Kharkiv region.

Found via the latest update from Jumani of the West on Twitter, (unrolled) which has a more detailed map.

Ukraine Just Captured One Of Russia’s Most Capable Aerial Electronic Warfare Pods (TheDrive/TheWarZone)

Ukrainian forces have been capturing significant amounts of Russian materiel of various kinds as they keep pushing eastward and southward as part of their ongoing counteroffensives. These spoils of war now reportedly include a relatively intact example of an RTU 518-PSM self-protection jamming pod. This pod is associated with the latest version of the larger Khibiny-U electronic warfare suite used on the Su-30SM Flanker-H, and its capture holds potentially great intelligence value.

Pictures of the front end of the pod in question began circulating on social media earlier today. It was reportedly discovered among the wreckage of a Russian Su-30SM, with the serial number RF-81773 and bort number Red 62, that was shot down earlier in the conflict near the city of Izium (Izyum) in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. It would appear that Russian forces had made no serious attempt to locate what was left of the aircraft, and remove or destroy it to prevent their capture before the area was recently liberated.

The possibility of gleaning new details about what the jammer inside the RTU 518-PSM pod, as well as the rest of the Khibiny-U system, can and cannot do is exactly why its capture is significant. Elements of all three known versions of Khibiny have almost certainly been recovered in the country of the fighting already, including from the remains of an Su-35S that came down in the vicinity of Izium back in April before Russian forces initially captured the area. However, this newly captured example of the RTU 518-PSM pod appears to be in especially good condition.

The potential intelligence haul could be even greater depending on the condition of other components of the electronic warfare suite on the crashed jet, as well. If it is indeed from the wreckage of Su-30SM Red 62, that aircraft could also have been fitted with the L150 Pastel radar homing and warning system (RHAWS), which is used for self-defense and for helping with the targeting of Kh-31P anti-radiation missiles, as well as UV-30MKR chaff/flare dispensers.

There's potentially more for Ukrainian intelligence personnel, and almost certainly their foreign partners, such as those in the United States, to pick over here than just the hardware, too. Any surviving data storage systems with any software used to run portions of the Khibiny-U could actually be more valuable, especially given the reported DRFM signal mimicking functionality.

The actual subcomponents, including computer chips and other electronics, used in the RTU 518-PSM and any other elements of the associated electronic warfare complex could provide valuable industrial intelligence, too. As The War Zone, among others, has reported in the past, the conflict in Ukraine has exposed just how reliant Russia's defense industry is on foreign-sourced parts.

The apparent decision on the part of the Russian military to make no efforts to do anything about the remains of this aircraft, possibly due to the belief that their positions in this part of Ukraine were relatively secure, can only add insult to injury.