My next top 10 series will be ranking the most influential battles of the war to date.

You’ll see breakdowns of the order of battle and tactical maneuvers, with rough casualty estimates for both sides using OSINT tools of the battles for Robotyne, Irpin, Bakhmut and many more.

Stay tuned!

Ukraine has begun rapidly deploying their new improved interceptor drone units, which fly at higher speeds, and are designed to shoot down Russian jet-drone drones. This has resulted in a recent large increase of interceptions of Russian Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet-drones, especially across the central and northern regions of Ukraine.

The southern, eastern, and western regions still lack these improved interceptor drone units, however in western Ukraine, this is less of a problem for Ukraine, because not as many jet-drones are able to reach this area due to higher interception rates further east. In the south and east, however, the situation remains much worse for Ukraine, with a substantially lower interception rate. Odesa is one of the most striking examples of this, where a lot of the air defence still relies on surface-to-air missiles, aviation, and mobile fire crews.

Furthermore, with Russia constantly increasing their jet-drone production rate and usage, even a hypothetical 90% interception rate (which might be reached in the next month) wouldn't be anywhere near enough to stop the systematic destruction of Ukraine's warehouses and other critical industries. However, the rapid progress Ukraine has made in countering these drones has been very impressive - and the current increased interception rate even more-so, considering the current F-16 maintenance crisis.

Although, as Ukraine develops their counter-measures, Russia will naturally develop their own counter-measures to these counter-measures, forcing Ukraine to adapt in turn as well. Russia seems very committed to the development of the Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet-drones, especially considering they purposefully decreased the production rate of the Geran-2 to facilitate this boom in production of jet-powered drones, so I think we can expect some additional changes and modifications to appear in the near future.

Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles are currently attemping to attack a target in Tula, Russia.

2 missiles have been intercepted, whilst 2-3 remain.

All the FP-5 Flamingo cruises were intercepted.

Recently, a Russian S8000 Banderol jet-powered strike UAV struck a bridge in Kyiv city.

Side note, I'd love to visit this place one day after the war. It looks beautiful

4 Kh-59/69 cruise missiles just impacted something near Voznesensk, Mykolaiv Oblast.

Possibly the airbase.

Don't get me wrong, this is great news on the tactical level. But don't get ahead of yourself and lose sight of the holistic art of war. Frontline advances are only one aspect of the entire strategic balance of the conflict.

Vehicle losses for September are going to be available tommorow, which will be very interesting to see.

These monthly frontline changes of a net gain of Minus ~486.9 km² are the worst for Russia since the November 2022 Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive.

Other maps, such as Deepstate, will not show such a large Ukrainian advance as they have not yet updated their maps in areas where Ukrainian forces are actively counterattacking (Lyman, Komar, Stepnohirsk, Novopavlivka, Kupyansk, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, and Sumy) due to OPSEC and informational purposes.

This was a very bleak month for Russia on the frontline, but a very productive one for them when it comes to mid-to-long-range strikes. It's likely that in the coming months, the monthly changes will once again flip back in favour of Russia, and stabilise in the low-hundreds of km² throughout winter.

As AMK correctly points out, Russia has been extremely productive in other areas of attrition. Strategic, operational, and tactical level strikes all add up into what could be considered a metophorical "pool" of overall inflicted attrition.

As reported by AMK, the front has largely stabilised east of Lyman.

Limited Russian counterinfiltrations around the area of Yampil and the forest east of Lyman continue as the front likely is settling on the Zherebets river.

Further north, Russian forces under heavy Ukrainian pressure are slowly withdrawing to the Zherebets at Balka Zhuravka and Makiivka.

The only noteworthy shift is a potential Ukrainian bridgehead over the Zherebets at the village of Yampolivka. This is unconfirmed, and if true, is likely very small in size.

Apologies if the pace of my posts begins to slow down a bit.

I'm returning to some normal life duties now after a couple months off.

Vehicle losses have been released for the month of September.

Primary credit: @HeyHey_Hayden TG

In total, Russia lost 32 vehicles whilst Ukraine lost 175. A ratio of 1:5.5

Excluding Armoured cars/MRAPs, which skew the ratio as Russia hardly utilises them at all whilst Ukraine does so in huge number for transport purposes, Russia lost 32 vehicles whilst Ukraine lost 69. A ratio of 1:2.2

Regarding self-propelled artillery, which is a great indicator of capacity to inflict attrition, Russia lost 7 vehicles whilst Ukraine lost 37. A ratio of 1:5.3

Russian losses are counted by UkraineWarSpotting. Ukrainian losses are counted by LostArmour. Credit to HeyHeyHayden for compiling numbers.

Of course, these vehicle losses are all geolocated and only completely destroyed vehicles are counted. There could of course be some mistakes.

The common cope that i hear: “But Russia uses only civilian vehicles! Ukraine actually cares about the lives of their soldiers! Civilian vehicles are not counted in this!”

Are we still seriously falling for “meatwave assaults” in 2026?

A) I have spoken to Ukrainian soldiers that confirm the AFU also uses civilian vehicles in non-combat roles, for transport purposes. Russia does the same. In a war of attrition, cheap but good enough equipment is better than extremely expensive perfect equipment.

B) Adding onto that, Russia has a huge domestic war economy which can churn out so many civilian vehicles that it wouldn’t matter how many were destroyed. If Ukraine’s military vehicles such as SPGs, IFVs etc are destroyed, it needs to wait on deliveries from the west.

C) If AFU command cared about the lives of their soldiers, the Robotyne and Kursk mass suicides would never have happened. Ukraine quite literally burned through tens of billions of dollars worth of Western vehicles in Kursk oblast alone.

D) Even if vehicle losses favoured Ukraine by 2x, this would be nowhere close to the relative attrition needed to be inflicted upon Russia, because of Russia’s industrial capacity.

E) Keep in mind that armies collapse long before they are physically out of manpower or vehicles, as per historical examples such as the Germans in WW1 Collapse is induced when overall attrition inflicted reaches a critical point. Drones only mask this attrition and delay the final outcome. Ukraine is obviously far far closer to this critical point than Russia.

2 Russian Kh-59/69 cruise missiles to Krivyy Rih.

the Kh-59/69s to Kropyvnytskyy.

They likely impacted Kanatove Airbase, Kirovohrad Oblast.