Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Stepan: https://twitter.com/childsacrifice1

Arestovich reminds us that he only reveals information already available in open sources, and that has already been officially announced in order to not accidentally cause any harm. 

Battlefield update

Kherson area: The UAF have taken Vysokopillya, Pot’omkyne and Ol’hyne. The Russians have fallen back to Novopetrivka. The UAF has taken DNR army POWs and this is good because they can be exchanged for Ukrainians in Russian captivity. These are not the only 3 more settlements that were taken by the UAF, but Arestovich says he will not say which until the Ukrainian general staff officially announces it. 

Aims of the offensive: The current stage of the operation should not be measured by the amount of territory taken, as for now its aims are: the capture of better staging grounds for the employment of Ukrainian reserves in future offensives, the destruction of Russian logistics and rear areas, and lastly isolating the operational theatre. The Ukrainian spokesperson for the south has said that the Russian forces in Kherson are in a state of “operational encirclement”. Arestovich compares the Russian collapse to a boulder rolling down a mountain. At first, it is slow but as it gains inertia it travels faster and faster as a result of its own weight. Arestovich says that this stone is still in the slow stage but once it starts rolling the collapse will be significant. He believes it will become “very interesting” in 3-4 weeks.

Crossings

Arestovich says that there are 20k Russian soldiers in the “encirclement” who cannot properly coordinate or be supplied by Russian forces on the other side of the Dniepr. All crossings and pontoon bridges are under Ukrainian artillery control and are quickly destroyed. A manifestation of the Russian army’s crossing problems is the fact that civilian vehicles are forbidden to use the crossings to try to prevent civilian spotters and speed up the supply process. The amount of supplies expended on a daily basis far exceeds the potential for supply. The Russian high command is reacting and sending all available forms of river crossings to Kherson from pontoon bridges to barges and inflatable craft. However, this will not be enough. Supplies are getting through but not enough. The Russian grouping of forces in Kherson needs around 4000 tonnes of supplies daily to function, but Arestovich believes that less than 1000 tonnes are getting through. The grouping receives 30-40% of its needs. Furthermore, the pressure that Ukrainian forces are exerting on the Russians along with strikes on logistical targets by Ukraine accelerates the logistical collapse. According to Arestovich the Russians have lost 1500 killed and wounded in the first four days of the operation. At some point, the grouping will collapse.

Other frontlines

The Ukrainians are attacking in the east to the northeast of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk but Arestovich refuses to give details. The Ukrainians are also performing flanking attacks on Russian positions in the Izyum area. The Russian high command is reinforcing the Melitopol/Tokmak direction. Arestovich says that the Russians army may soon start to dig in on the isthmus that leads into Crimea. These reinforcements are to be used defensibly because the Russians fear a Ukrainian offensive into Melitopol because it would collapse the front line from Kherson to Mariupol. The Russians are fighting in such a way that disregards the terrain and the enemy. They simply draw lines on a map and attack in a straight line ignoring enemy composition or terrain factors. Arestovich says that, sure, this works when you have 20 cannons to the enemies 1, but when this ratio is reduced to 1:5 or even 1:10, the offensive tends to get bogged down regardless of what the Ukrainian high command does in response.

Ukrainian strikes

There are 10+ Ukrainian strikes on Russian rear areas every day. The Russians have moved back their HQs in the Kherson direction but Arestovich assures us that they will still be hit. The relocation of HQs and logistics dumps is a lot of time and effort for them to just be destroyed 2 or 3 days later than they would have been. Arestovich says that the Ukrainians know what is happening in every square meter of occupied territory thanks to recon by partisans and “other sources” (Arestovich says he nearly revealed something he shouldn’t have). The Ukrainians are performing a similar amount of strikes on the Melitopol area as they are in Kherson, and this shelling began on the same day as the Kherson offensive. All other directions are also shelled. Arestovich says the Ukrainianians have sufficient shells and HIMARS.

The Ukrainian high command knows where the 3rd Army Corps is and where it is going and is ready for it, but will not reveal this information just yet.

Accusations of biological weapons in Ukraine

In Geneva, the Russians are accusing America of having biological weapons on the territory of Ukraine. Arestovich says that this is a symptom of the dysfunctional global security architecture which has not achieved a single goal since February 24th and where states such as Russia can make such claims with literally 0 evidence. He says that the Russians are trying to “cosplay” as Colin Powell and his claims of WMDs in Iraq.

The Russians claimed that they are using Tuvans to communicate in their own language in Ukraine similar to Navajo native Americans in ww2, but Arestovich says that Ukrainians can “acquire” some Tuvans and use Ukrainians from the Zakarpattia Oblast who speak a unique dialect of Hungarian mixed with Ukrainian that even most Ukrainians would not understand.

UK’s new prime minister announcement

In Britain, Liz truss has won the post of prime minister. This is good news for Ukraine as she has promised to continue to aid Ukraine and that “her first phone call would be to Zelenskiy”. Arestovich says that Truss is perhaps the only western politician with a rational strategic vision and a desire to reconstruct the global security order to exclude countries such as the Russian Federation and China. Arestovich says that Britain wants more power in the world but lacks the resources, but America will help them in that regard and has put the UK in charge of northern Europe, Poland, and Ukraine. If Johnson was Churchill then Truss will hopefully be Thatcher.

Other

Arestovich says that Kadyrov “resigning” is a purely internal Russian political power struggle between factions in the Russian state and has nothing to do with Ukraine or the wider international scene./

President Zelenskiy held a telephone conversation with President Macron of France. Macron announced that Russian troops must leave the territory of the ZNPP. The nuclear blackmail from Russia is continuing. An accident, if it were to happen, would reach the scale of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.