Ukraine Update January

2025 -Exit Strategy for Pooty, Drone Strikes (more?), Oil Woahs!

Drone Strikes

One hundred twenty-one drones attacked Russia last night. The following regions (not necessarily the city of the same name) were attacked:

Bryansk — JSC Silicon Group / Kremniy EL microelectronics plant, Ryazan — Novo-Ryazanskaya oil refinery (below left), Dyagilevo military airfield, and a thermal power plant, Kursk — command center, Saratov, Rostov — Engel’s airbase, Moscow region, Voronezh, Tula, Oryol, Lipetsk, and Crimea, Ukraine.

Donald Trump has removed Biden’s restrictions on targeting specific aspects of Russia’s infrastructure, most notably a heating plant that supplied winter heating for many residents of Ryazan. Russia has been attacking the heating and electrical infrastructure in Ukraine for years, but Ukraine has been restricted by the United States (Biden) from doing so in return. This is a significant development because loving a war is tough when you’re freezing cold. High prices on butter and crappy Chinese car parts are things you only think about in the supermarket checkout line or when something breaks down, but it’s much harder to set aside the thought of frost forming in your living room.

Russians are calling for another round of Oreshnik, apparently believing that it is some kind of superweapon despite the ineffectual display it made on its debut over a month ago.

Ukraine has left the town of Velyka Novosilk, allowing Russian forces to place their flag on another pile of rubble.

Russia is sending its best to war.

Ukrainian forces found the passport of a Russian nuclear weapons specialist in Kharkiv region where he was part of a storm brigade. Russia is digging deep to find men.

Russia had an OSINT-confirmed kill of a 45mm M1942 tank gun in Kursk, but there is a nuance. This isn’t 1945. It’s 2025.

Russia has lost only 35 tanks in January so far, visually confirmed. This makes the job of OSINTers harder as the sample size is too small to extract meaningful extrapolations from. Ukrainian soldiers in the Kurakhov area report that they haven’t seen a single armored vehicle during Russian attacks since the New Year. “In September 2024, it was the norm, daily attacks with armored units, now they’re either on foot, motorcycles, or in Ladas.”

A group of Russian servicemen filmed themselves illegally executing six Ukrainian POWs, with the commander demanding that they get everyone’s faces on the footage. They are bragging about it. It’s disgusting. The Captain was identified as Oleg Vladimirovich Yakovlev, born 16.06.1992 (that’s June 16th, 1992 for my American friends).

The Telegraph led with a headline that took me a minute to parse. “Ukraine may soon deploy drone drone carrier carriers. So, this is a drone that carries drones that carries drones? Did I parse that correctly? Drone inception. They have since fixed the headline to simply “drone carriers,” but the original actually makes sense. It’s a naval drone that carries drones that release smaller drones.

Russian and Ukrainian OSINT-verified losses for 23 January.

The Russian rebuilding of the occupied territories continues.