Pushilin, the head of the DPR, after listening to Vladimir Putin’s speech on live TV commented: ‘For more than 3,000 days we have been fighting for the right to be part of Russia’, the DPR chief thanked Putin for supporting the referendum in the republic.
The company Rostec said that production of military products will be increased as part of the decree on partial mobilisation. The law is the one passed on 21 September amending the Russian Criminal Code, a country that as of today finds itself in a war economy.
On the issue of the status of ‘Special Operation’ and its transformation into war, Peskov said that no decision had yet been made to review the status of the operation. “So, from a legal point of view, we continue, although the content of the military campaign in Ukraine is obviously changing as the US and NATO are becoming more actively involved in it, as well as limited mobilisation measures in Russia.”
And now we come to the situation at the front as of 21 September at 3pm.
Soldiers of PMC ‘Wagner’ clashed with Ukrainian mercenaries near Bachnut in the DPR. According to social media sources, Wagner’s men found Israeli army documents and foreign weapons, which the Ukrainian armed forces abandoned during the retreat.
Yesterday, attacks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant continued. The Russians blamed the Ukrainians and vice versa. Significant damage to the facility.
Today, the Russian army launched a series of missile attacks on the Pechenizes’ke reservoir dam in the Kharkiv region. “In the Pechenizes’ke settlement, the Russian armed forces tried to destroy the Pechenizes’ke reservoir dam,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had earlier stated. “Yesterday and today the Russians fired missiles at the Pechenizes’ke dam, there is a threat of damage to the dam,” said the advisor to the head of the Kharkiv Regional Council Natalya Popova.
According to the Russian social sphere: for the second consecutive day, Ukrainian channels reported attacks by Russian armed forces on the Pechenizes’ke reservoir dam. Despite the absence of objective control photographs indicating the facts of the attacks on the dam, from a military point of view the withdrawal of the dam on the Seversky Donets is not without significance. But only in the short term. Given the withdrawal of Russian Armed Forces units from the Kharkiv region and the attempts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to establish crossings and take Krasny Liman, as well as to develop an offensive against Kremennaya and Lisichansk, raising the water in the river could be a temporary solution for a partial ‘freezing’ of the front line.
This would sweep away established, partially flooded crossings to coastal settlements and possibly force Ukrainian units to relocate along the banks of the Seversky Donets.
In the future, crossings, especially after the autumn rains, will become much more difficult for the Ukrainian armed forces. After the drop in the water level, the problem of the flooded seabed and floodplain remains. This problem, however, will have to be addressed. Ultimately, the Ukrainian formations will have to make crossings without gravel and not along a dry riverbed. At the same time, the river level will drop upstream: in the area of Khotomli, Stary Saltov, Rubizhnoye, Volchansk and the Russian-Ukrainian border, it will become easier to cross in this area.
Therefore, if the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation actually complete what they have started and destroy the Pechenegsky Reservoir Dam, it will have to be used as quickly as possible, e.g. to cut off and defeat the grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine between the Seversky Donets and Oskol.
During the usual briefing, the Russian Defence Ministry stated: ‘All attempts to advance the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Nikolaev-Kryvyi Rih direction have been thwarted. The Izyum-Balakleyskaya grouping has been moved into the Donbass to strengthen the attack capabilities of Russian troops. In the last 3 weeks, over 7,000 Ukrainian militants were killed, 970 pieces of equipment, including 208 tanks, were destroyed during the special operation’.
Graziella Giangiulio
