Summary of the semi-daily livestream with Oleksiy Arestovych, former Ukraine’s Presidential Head of Office advisor, Day 342, January 31st. Kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak
English voice-over video by Privateer Station:
Original video in Russian:
⚡️ Fighter jets:
The situation is exactly the same as with Stingers, Javelins, HIMARS, and tanks – at first no, then suddenly – they are already in use. F-16s are in use by multiple nations, and any one of them can supply aircraft to 🇺🇦 Ukraine. Arestovych is 100% sure that aircraft will be supplied earlier than everyone expected. Until there is a united position, all officials will try to avoid the question, deny, or reply that they don’t know.
⚡️ Battlefield update:
In the last 3 days, the enemy did a significant amount of bombings on 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
Kherson: 🇺🇦 GUR published a video of a nightly raid across the Dnipro river, destruction of enemy headquarters. Kherson was shelled 42 times in the last 3 days – including harbor, hospital, school, bus station, bank, and apartment buildings. 3 killed and 8 wounded yesterday.
Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar, Toretsk: multiple bombings at civilian buildings, 3 killed.
Vuhledar: enemy tried to attack, but failed. The Recon unit of the 155th brigade was destroyed. Some reports, that 🇺🇦 Ukraine even recaptured some areas.
Marinka: the enemy attack has ceased, with no movements, same locations for 3 weeks.
Avdiivka: enemy attacks near Opytne were unsuccessful, the same at the north. Some movements near Krasnohorivka.
Bakhmut: movements from Klishchiivka are uncomfortably close to the road. deepstatemap.live does show a pretty accurate situation. The enemy wants to encircle Bakhmut, unsuccessful at the north due to terrain disadvantage.
Blahodatne: enemy announced capturing it already twice. 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s official position is, that Blahodatne has battles ongoing.
Soledar: Enemy movements to the north, in direction of Kryva Luka, to encircle Siversk. That would remove problems with Kreminna, and create the possibility of reaching Lyman. This tactic has been seen many times.
Kreminna: Traditional location of clashes, both sides claim attacks near Chervonopopivka.
⚡️ Russian future plans:
The overall enemy is working on encircling 3 small locations – Avdiivka, Bakhmut, and Siversk with a later goal on Chasiv Yar, Yampil, and Toretsk, and then Sloviansk, Konstantynivka, Kurakhove and then Pokrovsk, Sviatohirsk, Kupiansk again. This is what Gerasimov is reporting as the maximum possible with 200k soldiers. The contingency plan for 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s counterattack is drafting more soldiers.
Multiple 🇺🇦 Ukrainian sources have confirmed that end of February and March are going to have heavy battles in Donbas. Everybody has everything clear. However there will be attempts to persuade of possible attacks in other directions – Sumy, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa – it might be hard even for the military to distinguish them from the truth. There are currently no hidden signs of attacks from other directions.
⚡️ Iran:
There is currently only one confirmed target – Isfahan air base. The attack method is unknown, and no victims reported. Another attack yesterday on a convoy in 🇸🇾 Syria – 🇮🇶 Iraq route, which is used by 🇮🇷 Iran to bring weapons to 🇸🇾 Syria.
🇮🇷 Iran has had more serious attacks, for example in 2021. Iran is keeping quiet on damages, there have been explosions, but drone factories haven’t been damaged – manufacturing and storage happen underground.
Even a precise strike can’t neutralize their weapons and potential. Those strikes likely won’t affect weapon supplies to Russia.
⚡️ Ukraine strikes:
In the last couple of days 🇺🇦 Ukraine made several very successful strikes at enemy headquarters. Unverified information of 70 killed in just one of the enemy headquarters.
There was a strike at Volnovakha which is a very important rail hub for supplying the southern front – Vuhledar, Makiivka.
More strikes at warehouses in Luhansk and Donetsk districts.
⚡️ PMC Wagner:
Various sources are reporting, that there are less of Wagner mercenaries near Bakhmut. There is a version that this is due to Gerasimov trying to phase them out. Only in a couple of weeks at Soledar they had 4k killed and 10k wounded. In this month their losses are more than before because they changed tactics to infantry assault due to a shortage of tanks and artillery.
There are reports of Wagner leaving the Donetsk district, and separate cases of their mercenaries seen in the Zaporizhia district, but that is not systematic.
Systematic actions are seen regardless of how well they are attempted to be hidden. After such intense battles, any military structure needs a pause.
⚡️ Saakashvili:
Mikheil Saakashvili is reported to be in intensive care. Preparing for protests on the 20th of February in European countries, in front of government buildings, as 🇬🇪 Georgian embassies aren’t interested to help. It’s time to start acquiring permits where it’s necessary. We are defending a person who is being killed. Nobody should stay indifferent.
