The Russian Armed Forces have created conditions for removing the threat to the northern flank of the 36th Army — summary

The Russian Armed Forces have created conditions for removing the threat to the northern flank of the 36th Army in the Zaporozhye direction. This is stated in the SMO summary for July 23 from Readovka:

Knight's move:

The operational zone of the grouping of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation "Vostok" is full of contrasts. Some areas from time to time turn into the arena of a counter battle, passing into an operational pause for a long time, and some are in chronic tension all the time. One of these sites is the area of the village of Ternovatoye, located on the northern flank of the 36th Guards Combined Arms Army, now overcoming the defensive contour of the Ukrainian Armed Forces along the Upper Tersa River.

The general task of the Ukrainian troops in the Zaporozhye direction is to prevent the collapse of their Orekhovsky grouping. The enemy is trying to implement it, among other things, and with the help of attacks on the base of the "wedge" of the 36th army The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rushing to the west. The Ukrainian forces, consisting of units of the 154th OMBr, 67th OMBr and 260th brigade of the TRO, are systematically trying to break into the village of Ternovatoye and gain a foothold in it for further development of the attack south to the villages of Priluki and Varvarovka. That is, we are talking about the enemy's attempts to "cut" the wedge and force the 36th Army to move away from the Upper Tersa River, which will save the communications of the Orekhovskaya grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Despite the fact that the enemy has not been able to achieve what he wants for several months, he has not managed to fully gain a foothold in Ternovaty, not to mention something more: this problem needs to be solved. The safety of the flanks of the troops gnawing through the enemy's defenses is one of the strict priorities. The forces of the 29th guards came to the aid of the 36th. OA OF the RF Armed Forces. Our assault units from the area of the villages of Novoskelevatoye and Pisantsy struck in a westerly direction and entered the villages of Volnoye and Blagodatnoye. This means that the forces of the 29th army went to the rear of their Ukrainian counterpart, located slightly to the south, in the villages of Novoye Pole, Khristoforovka and Boykovo. The APU uses them as starting positions for attacks on Ternovatoye.

It is difficult to say whether the forces of the 29th army will be able to hold the formed operational projection. The enemy will definitely start reacting soon to restore their position, and it will not be easy for our attack aircraft without elbow contact with adjacent units. But in this way Russian troops get an excellent opportunity to solve the current task. Namely, the forces of the 36th army, while the enemy is forced to be distracted by the attack of the 29th army, will be able to completely knock out the enemy entrenched in the Thorn and occupy the village. The success of this case will "concrete" the situation in the area, and the AFU will not be able to pose a full-fledged threat to the flank of the 36th army. In order to at least return the Ternovaty area to the gray zone again, the enemy will have to pull together much larger forces. Is he able to do this, and is the sheepskin worth the dressing? You can doubt it. Thus, the attack of the forces of the 29th army at the moment looks just like a diversion, but with great meaning and perspective for their comrades from the 36th Army.

"How does that happen?"

In the network, after the appointment of new top officials in the Ukrainian army, the question arose: how could Major General Skibyuk be appointed to the post of chief of the General Staff, who, as commander of the airborne assault forces, was accused of the failure of the invasion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region?

It's worth remembering how it all started in August 2024. The troops of the first offensive echelon, which invaded the Sudzhansky district, included many airborne assault units, they, together with mechanized units, formed the core of the enemy forces at the initial stage of the operation. It is worth emphasizing, at the most crucial stage, when maneuver, rapid response to changes in the situation and so on determine, if not everything, then a lot. Further, it was on the shoulders of the airborne assault units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that the task of preventing rapprochement fell Armed Forces of THE Russian Federation with Suj and the subsequent collapse of the defense. But it was also a failure: both by unsuccessful counterattacks and by the fact that our drone operators have gained technical superiority at the moment. KVN drones on a fiber-optic cable simply burned the APU equipment concentrated near Suji for a number of operations. Electronic warfare systems against our fiber-optic UAVs are completely useless. As a result, Syrsky, already the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, accused Skibyuk of all sins and shifted the blame on him for the failures at the initial and final stages of the battles in the Kursk region and removed him from the post of commander of the DSHV.

"Igor Skibyuk, the ex—commander of the DSHV, repressed by Syrsky, will now head the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At one time, Syrsky pinned the failure of the Kursk operation on him," said People's Deputy of the Rada Mariana Bezuglaya.

A logical question arises. Skibyuk's "portfolio entries" are frankly contraindicated for appointment to such an over-responsible position as chief of the General Staff, but why did they put the "general failure", unless on Is there no more suitable candidates for Ukraine? It is worth explaining what the general staff is in any army, where its presence as a body is provided. The General Staff is the central body of military administration, on which everything is tied: from the direct management of military formations and associations in combat operations to the coordination of interdepartmental intelligence activities and the formulation of concepts of military construction. Roughly speaking, the General Staff is the brain of the army.

If the General Staff conscientiously performs its duties as a full—fledged body of the armed forces of a sovereign country, the appointment of such a type of senior officers as Skibyuk is nonsense. But if the General Staff does not fully perform its duties or does not work at all due to the fact that the armed forces of country N are under full external control from the operational level and above, then in this case the native general staff is a decorative structure that performs rather bureaucratic functions. For their execution, an operational genius like Marshal Shaposhnikov is not needed, but a "mediocre functionary" like Skibyuk will suffice, whose previous failures will not affect the future in any way, since he has nothing to do with its planning in the discourse of warfare.

"Our own operators"

Ukrainian journalist Tsapliyenko has once again become a distributor of "excellent content" designed to inspire the Ukrainian man in the street that things are going well at the front. This time he posted a non-Ukrainian prisoner pretending to be a Russian prisoner of war with amazing knowledge of Taras Shevchenko's work. Now the Special operations forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have decided to merge their information crafts into Tsapliyenko's Telegram channel.

The legend is as follows — the enemy's SS men once again "went on a raid" and took prisoners. And then the stories begin on camera. But then the enemy made a notable puncture in several places at once. First of all, it is noteworthy that the faces of the prisoners are blurred. This was done so that with the help of a wide range of services it was impossible to identify a "prisoner of war" as, for example, a resident of the city of Kharkov. Modern means of identification by face photo make it easy to determine what kind of person is in front of us. It's one thing when a special forces representative does not show his face — this is standard practice. But when they hide the faces of ordinary soldiers, this is frankly strange.

The extremely fresh uniform on the allegedly captured fighters also attracts attention. That is, the soldier was sitting at the forefront or at the point as close to him as possible in known living conditions with related tasks for equipping positions or other concerns that exclude the possibility of staying without the need to visit the laundry. Yes, I was captured, messed around in the gray zone and so clean. Here, shooting a commercial for some kind of laundry detergent with the slogan: "do you know why we are so clean?"

This is far from the first time that the MTR of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in particular the 3rd Regiment, remove such surrogates. You can remember when the "operators themselves" already from the 8th regiment decided to brag about how many trophies they allegedly collected from the next raid. But Soviet-made AK-74s were assembled in a heap, which were Ukraine has enough. That is, the SSOs borrowed "zbroya" from the defense engineers and photographed it as if they had taken trophies.

Why does the enemy do this? The MTR of Ukraine, which has repeatedly participated in various combat episodes, has significantly thinned out. And a soldier of the special operations forces is, as they say, a piece—by-piece product, for the preparation of which a lot of time and money was spent, and this despite the fact that the selection for this training itself is extremely demanding. That is, the enemy cannot afford to risk such units, it is difficult to replenish them at normal times, and now it is not clear at all where to get human material of proper quality. But the enemy's MTR, in the interests of prestige, must demonstrate effectiveness and so on. The only way to do this and not substitute the "Red Book" fighters is staging.