So immediately supposedly reported:
Supposedly, Rybar is claiming the Ukrainians had another breakthrough across the Oskil at Lozove. Can we get someone on telegram to verify?
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Predictions time!
tldr; Ukraine is going to keep having successes until the new troops show up. I would expect Lugansk is next while pinning a lot of Russian troops in Kherson. In Lugansk, I would expect the Ukrainians to rip up the railways as they work their way through, at least near the Russian border. How well the Russians do after the troops show up depends on a few things.
If Russia is going to do the deployment of their mobilization properly, the troops are going to take two to three months to arrive in theater. The reservists being called up are going to need time to drill properly and become cohesive units. That means November at the earliest. November in the Donbas is chilly (6 C day time average and 1 C at night), but relatively dry and snow free. Winter clothing is going to be needed pretty quick. If the reports of the lack of night vision equipment are accurate, fighting in winter will be even more problematic: sunrise is 657 on December 1st and sunset is 1538. The cold weather uniforms and night vision equipment are going to be really needed.
The logistics strain we have seen so far is going to be compounded unless a lot of those reservists are going to be made into lorry/truck drivers. The lack of palletization is going to be major problem still unless the Russian armed forces have fixed that recently. I have not heard the Russian army has done so, but I am willing to listen to correction.
If the troops are properly equipped and trained, I expect the Russians to launch offensives across the border into Kharkov, Lugansk and anywhere else they will have been pushed across the border at. There might even be another yolo to Kiev again. That said, I would then expect the Russian advances to peter out again sometime around the end of February. The Raputitsa will return around then.
The Ukrainians will then attempt chewing up the Russian forces like they did during this year's Raputitsa. If the Russians will have learned from this year's events, the Ukrainians will be less effective at it. Once Genera Mud leaves the field, the Russians could restart offensive actions and reach the Dniepr.
However...
If the Russians do
not properly equip their troops and merely throw them into the fight as fast as possible, the Russian mobilization will be a debacle. Give me properly trained troops, not more bodies (or so I would say if I were the Russian commanders). Specifically, I would be asking for more truck drivers and infantry. The former are relatively easy to train, but the latter takes time if they are going to be effective. If the logistics are not fixed, then the increased pressure will be bad. Really bad. That increased pressure could make the whole situation even worse for the Russians rather than better.
If the Russians rush the reservists forward, we will see massive casualties and little, if any, benefit. Ukrainians offensives might slow down, but won't be stopped. There
may be mass surrenders rather than retreats. As the Raputitsa takes hold, the poor logistics and poorly trained will get chewed on badly. I would expect the Ukrainians to attempt another round of aggressive advances next summer: they will more of their troops trained in the West in the mean time. If we are going to see western MBTs in Ukrainian hands, it will be in April or May next year.
Those are my predictions: I see a fork here. Either the Russians will sort their issues out and properly deploy the reservists, making gains again, or there are going to be a lot of dead Russian men for little benefit and headed to a probable defeat.
I want to call out people saying the Russians have lost less than 8k dead. There would be no reason to mobilize if the Russians had lost that little, as 32k casualties out of the original 190k troops is a paltry percentage: 16% +/-. The deaths would have been 4%. I've kept my own tracker going and based on destroyed equipment, I get a minimum of 13k dead and based on the equipment losses the Russians are rapidly closing in on IFV/APC and tank losses for 80 BTG...of the original 130. Note: my count does not include infantry very well and, historically, infantry have taken it on the nose the most and losses will be higher.
Quick and easy predictive test: if the Ukrainians shred another oblast - looking at you, Lugansk - like done in Kharkov, the Russian army in Ukraine has been hollowed out definitively.
I have been wrong before and will be again. Let's see how wrong I am.
