Update for September 13-15
I will start by showing the shellings of Sumy and Chernihiv. These are only a subset of the shellings. The ones reported, I believe Russia shells many more locations daily. On September 15th, Ukraine reported 91 “arrivals.”
Russian ground forces left the area around Kharkiv city but shelled some border towns. Like Chernihiv and Sumy, shelling of border towns in Kharkiv will be an everyday occurrence for the foreseeable future, along with occasional airstrikes like the ones noted here on Konstyantynivka and Vovchansk.
On September 15th, there were explosions and fires in the customs area and a nearby gas station in the border town of Nekhoteevka (A). Several days ago, Russia passed a mandatory evacuation order for this town. Russia claims Ukrainians are responsible for the explosions and fires.
A bit to the east, here is a zoomed-out look at some of the areas liberated in the Kharkiv oblast.
Russia is bombing Lozova and Vovchansk, and Russian border guards fled their post on September 14th in Verigovka.
A bit further south, Russia is heavily shelling Kupyansk, although reports in the past 48 hours claim the shelling is reducing in intensity. Presumably, Russia is withdrawing its artillery back slowly to new defensive positions, as I will talk about in a moment.
Take note that Russians claim Ukrainians are in Hryanykivka on the eastern bank of the Oskil River. Although Russians marked the Ukrainian forces on the western bank in the town of Dvorichna, it could have been a name mistake.
Russians are moving a lot of equipment around the Luhansk oblast, primarily fortifying the cities and towns around Troitske and Svatove. Be careful when you read news about these fortifications, though, because often people refer to these areas very generally, not literally speaking of these two specific towns.
Note that I marked the Krasna River with a thick light blue line.
For example, on September 15th, I saw a dozen or more reports referring to Novomykilske as “Svatovo,” but I can assure you it is a different town a few kilometers south. Russia is moving tanks and other heavy equipment into this town.
Throughout the Luhansk region, Russia uses schools to hide their troops and equipment, making the schools a valid target for precision weapons like HIMARS. One such school was targeted and destroyed on September 15th in the town of Kalmykivka.
Ukraine continues to expand its bridgehead across the Siverskyi Donets river.
On September 15th, Ukraine captured Sosnivka and Studenok (1). In addition, Ukraine is continuously assaulting Lyman (2) and Yampil (3). These attacks have not made much progress but force Russia to use its operational reserves. Meanwhile, the remaining Ukrainian troops moved north and west of Lyman (those guys capturing Sosnivka, for example). Moreover, there are rumors that Ukraine already has pontoons across the Oskil river and will soon use those to bolster this attack.
Russia claims to have retaken Bilohorivka (4). However, I do not have confirmation of this claim, so I marked the town as contested.
Russia recently posted several videos proving Ukrainians have taken complete control over Spirne and moved east. Russia is trying to push Ukraine back west (5). The artillery markers and airstrike markers in this image are all geo-confirmed strikes.
Bakhmut is the only area where Russia has had any success.
There is ongoing fighting in Soledar and Bakhmutske without notable change (6). A few days ago, Ukraine posted a video of their soldiers driving Russians out of the gypsum quarry on the northern side of Soledar.
There is ongoing fighting on the eastern side of Bakhmut without notable change (7). The same is true in Vesela Dolyna (8), Zaitseve (9, 10), and Odradivka (11) (click through the images below).
Russians claim to have captured Mykolaivka Druha sometime between September 12 and 14th (12), although I have not been able to confirm this capture with my sources in the Bakhmut area.
Similarly, Russia claims to have captured Mayorsk between September 13th and 15th, but I cannot confirm this capture (13).
Russia launches regular attacks on Krasnohorivka (14) and Avdiivka (15) without notable success.
However, Ukraine managed to recapture Anthill and the surrounding fortifications in the past few days. In addition, Ukraine still holds Republica Mist. So in this area to the southwest of Avdiivka, Ukraine managed to push Russia back to the pre-February 24th borders except for Pisky. Ukraine’s counterattack in Pisky failed. The town is no man’s land.
Russia is trying to retake the Anthill (16), but their attempts so far have failed.
South of Donetsk, Russia assaults Novomykhailivka (17) daily without notable successes.
Russia continuously shells and bombs the Velyka Novosilka, Vremivka, and Neskuchne areas.
On September 14th, the Russians claimed Ukraine tried to break their defenses around Nesterianka (18). However, the attack reportedly failed, and the Russians captured several Ukrainian soldiers.
Here is an image of the Kherson/Mykolaiv area. I know this image is overwhelming, but I want to give an overall view for people to understand the bigger picture of what is happening here.
In the north of this region, Ukraine attempted a breakthrough of the Russian line on September 14th (19). The attack failed.
In the Inhulets bulge area, Russia has repeatedly attacked Bezimenne (20), but each attack failed to dislodge the Ukrainian forces. On September 15th, Russians claimed Ukrainian recon forces managed to push south to Charivne (21). The light blue arrow denotes recon, not regular troops.
Closer to Kherson, Russian forces repeatedly attacked Novohryhorivka (22), but Ukrainians repelled each attack.
On September 14th, Russia launched a massive missile strike into a dam near Kryvyi Rih on the Inhulets river, which caused massive flooding downstream. The water level quickly rose more than 2 meters in some areas, although Ukrainian engineers began to repair the damage and the water levels began to go back down. In response, Russia fired more missiles into the dam and targeted another dam further upstream near Iskrivka. So now Russia has severely damaged two dams, each holding back massive water reservoirs.
Ukrainians are trying to patch the damage by filling the holes with dirt and gravel, but the flooding downstream is severe.
The Inhulets River feeds into the Dnipro River east of Kherson near Darivka and Sadove. Darivka is where Russia is using pontoon bridges to cross the Inhulets River, so this flooding doesn’t only hurt the Ukrainians fighting across the Inhulets but also damages Russia’s ability to move across the Inhulets as well. But, of course, Russia would only do such a thing in complete desperation.
Dam bursts also harm the Ukrainian civilian population, flooding homes and spreading pollution across the landscape. It is an ecological disaster.
