The Duran Podcast - Kupiansk falling. Russia attrition war accelerates

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Kupiansk falling. Russia attrition war accelerates

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on the military situation in Ukraine. And I believe the place that we need to focus on for this update is Kupyansk. Perhaps you may want to discuss the situation in Pakarov, Seversk, and a Russian buildup and advance in the south, in the Zaporoje region as well. a lot of fronts to discuss all of them, Russia advancing across all these fronts. The Russians moving forward everywhere. Now, back in August, we had this extraordinary and very surprising Russian breakthrough, northeast of Pukrovsk, which I still believe is the main battle that is to take. taking place. But the Russians suddenly broke through northeast of Bakrowski. We discussed it at the time.

We spoke about how the Russians were capturing villages, which were completely undefended, and there seemed to be no Ukrainian troops there. And this was putting in peril Ukrainian supply lines, not just to Pakrovsk, but to Konstantinovka as well. What then happened is entirely predictably, and the Russians must have known that this would happen. Zelensky and Siersky, the Ukrainian chiefs, the military chiefs, I realized that this had to be stopped in some way. So because the Ukrainian army is, as every report says now, desperately depleted, short of manpower, out of reserves,

the mobilization process has all but broken down. They had to deploy units from other battlefronts. They rush them to this area of northeast Bakrosk to hold the positions there. And what has happened is that the result is that the Ukrainians no longer have the forces or the reserves to hold back the Russians in other places. So what we see is major Russian advances in the north of the north, of the battlefronts in the Kupiansk, Lehman, Siversk area, and in the south in Zaporosia. Let's deal firstly with the north. Now, the point to understand about these northern areas, Kupiansk, Leman, Sivarsk, they're all connected with each other. They're all, they all

ultimately derive from the military geography, if you like, that was created by the Russians. after they captured Bahmert in May 2023. The capture of Bahmert opened the way for the Russians to move towards Sivask and to try to recapture these other two places, Lehman and Isium. The Russians, for a time, in 2022, controlled Liman and Isium.

But they lost them because the Ukrainians conducted a counter-offensive then. And the Russian defences weren't properly anchored because the towns of Sivarsk and Bachmert were still under Ukrainian control. The Russians captured Bajmert in 2003, May 23. Then there was the Ukrainian offensive later that year, which the Russians had to repent. Then in 2024, the big question for the Russians was capturing first Avdeyevka and breaking the siege that the Ukrainians had conducted against Donets, Donets City, the main city in Donbass, which the Russians control. And the Russians also had to want it to push the Ukrainians further and further away from Donets City. And that meant advancing all the way to Pakrovsk and capturing all of those places that ultimately.

threatened Donetsk. Now they have returned to this territory. They're in a stronger position than they were in 2022 because they hold Bachmut. They are in the process of capturing Siversk. Now Siversk is a relatively small place. It's very heavily fortified. It prevented the Russians from advancing and consolidating their positions in northern Dombas. There's been many, many battles there. The Russians, however, have now largely surrounded Sversk. They're shelling the place heavily. It looks as if there's fighting going on, either inside Svarsk itself or very close to it.

And Deep State, the Ukrainian mapping project, has now suddenly confirmed. that the Russians control, or at least are present in a large belt of territory, immediately to the north of Sivask. So it looks like Sivask probably at some point over the next couple of weeks is going to fall, and that will be an event as important in its way as the fall of Ugladah was last year in southern Dombas. The other place where things are happening, now is Kupiansk. Kupiansk is another important town. The Russians held it for a time in 2022. They lost it during the Ukrainian offensive in the autumn of that year because, again, as I discussed, because they didn't control Ahmad and Sivask, their defenses weren't properly

anchored. Now they are on the brink of capturing, recapturing Kupians. Now, there's been lots of reports about this battle. It looks as if the Russians again used the well-established strategy now of infiltrating the end to Kupians by using the various water pipes and gas pipes. And they, as a result, managed to get behind the Ukrainian defenders. It looks as if the defenses of Kupiansk are collapsing. There's been a report on the official Russian news agency tasks that nearly all of Kupiansk now is under Russian control, that the Ukrainians only hold some rearguard positions and are starting to withdraw from Kukyansk. Kupiansk is a fairly big, it's a bigish place, about 26,000 people before the war. But what makes it important is that if it is captured, then the Russians can advance and move towards capturing two other places that they held for a certain time in 2022.

These are Isium and Balaclayer. Isium is a major transport artery. it is the remaining road through which the Ukrainians send supplies to their forces in Dombas. There were two major road junctions, one in the north, one in the south, through which the Ukrainian sent their supplies to Dombas. The one in the south was Pakrosk, which the Russians are in the process of storming. The one in the north is EZIUM. The Russians control EZEEM and are able to hold it, which if they capture Siversk and they now hold Bachmert,

and if they also capture another town called Leman, which they're almost certain to be able to capture very quickly, once Sivask holds, then they will be able to hold EZUZU, then with Pachrosk, now likely to be stormed and to fall, in my opinion, fairly soon. Russians control all the big supply lines to Donbass. If you look at the map, you can see the roads, the road network and the railway network, it all goes basically to Donbass through these two towns, Izzyam in the north, Pachrosk in the south, and that's clearly what the Russians are working to do. And after? Well, after. What comes after? Well, what comes after? Well, let's first of all, before we get there, because we need to talk about Pagrarsk, because there's been a very complicated stories about Prakos. I said that Siersky and Zelensky moved all these troops to Pachrask, to northeast Pakrask.

There's intense fighting being going on in northeast Pagrotsk. There's very little drone footage coming from there, but the Ukrainians have made many claims of counterattacks in this area. Now, Russian sources and again, Tass the official Russian news agency is now starting to say this. They're all saying that all of these Ukrainian countertacks have been repelled. The Ukrainians were able to regain some ground. They were able to enter and even perhaps capture one or two villages, like a village called Vladimirvka. But they were not ultimately able to push the Russians back in this area of the Russian breakthrough. And we're getting lots of reports, which are now starting to be confirmed from TAS itself,

that the Russians now control large part of Pachrovsk itself, perhaps around 40% of the town, and that their Russians are now starting to break into the eastern suburb of Pakrovsk, which is Mirnograd, it is increasingly looking as if Pachrosk itself is going to fall and that Zelensky's and Siersky's decision to move so many troops to this area, to try to hold the positions there, what it has done is that it's left those Ukrainian forces out in the open where the Russians have been able to bomb them and launch artillery strikes against, them and deploy their drone forces against them. And the result is that those key reserves,

some of these units which supposedly were being held back for the last ditch defense of Kiev itself, that they've now been depleted in these battles. Now, if Prakosk and Isium are captured, then we are closer than we are closer than we are. We have been, at any point in the war, to a final encirclement of Ukrainian troops in Dombas, in Slaviansk, Kramatosk, and possibly Konstantinovka as well. These are the two big remaining towns that the Ukrainians control in Dombas. If the Ukrainians lose them, they've lost Dombas. They wanted to defend these two places, but they can't defend them if the supply

roads are cut. And if Pachrosk falls, the Russians are able to unflank them anyway. If you go back to our original programs that we made three and a half years ago at the start of the special military operation, we spoke then about how the Russians might be aiming to create a cauldron around the Ukrainian troops in Donbass. Obviously, at that time, we had no idea that it would take this long, But it looks as if we are starting to get closer and closer to that situation, to the position where with Izzyum and Pekrovsk, both lost, the Russians, are finally able to create that huge cauldron in Dombas with Ukraine's army defending Slaviansk and Kamatosk effectively encircled.

And that will be, of course, a critical moment in the war. Now, the Ukrainians could withdraw. Zelensky has shown a consistent unwillingness to countenance withdrawals. So we could be over the course of the winter, perhaps, looking at what might be the climactic battle of the war. Yeah. I think that's what we're looking at because the statement's coming from out of Zelensky's office and from people like Keith Kellogg is that Russia is losing. Yeah. Right. And they're saying that for a reason.

Yes. They're saying that for a reason because they know full well that things are really, really bad. What's going to happen when, if and when this encirclement does take place? Will Putin offer another deal? Who knows? There were reports in the summer of 2022 that Putin had contacted the Saudis at that time

and had told them that once the Russians captured Donbass, Putin would offer the West and the Ukrainians a deal. But that was in the summer of 2022 and those rumours were never confirmed. It may be that he will. What I can say

is that if we get into a situation where there is an encirclement of the bigger part of the Ukrainian army in Dombas, we are going to be looking at not just a military crisis, but a political crisis as well. I mean, a political crisis in Kiev and a political crisis in Europe. And given the kind of people we're talking about who are in charge in Europe at the moment, and some of the people in the US as well, it's very, very difficult to know how these people will react to a situation of that kind.

Now, just to say, and I do want to talk briefly about what's happening in the South because the Russians are steadily advancing in the South because, again, the Ukrainians don't have enough forces to hold the Russians back because they've concentrated their best forces to try to contain the Russian breakthrough in Pachrovsk. So the Russians are advancing relentlessly. I mean, steadily, day by day, they are making further and further progress. They're pushing closer and closer towards the Dnieper River to the city of Zaporosia. Again, there are Ukrainian forces trying to hold the Russians back in the far south, holding places like Guillaipoli and Orecko.

But those towns now look themselves to be at risk. of eventual encirclement if the Russians continue to advance from the east towards the west in the way that they're doing. There could be another simultaneous crisis developing because Zaporosia, this big industrial city on the Dnieper is exactly in that central area of the Dnieper that I have talked about many times. If the Russians reach it, if the Russians reach the NEPA at that point, then that is another massive operational crisis for Ukraine. Maybe not as dramatic as the crisis in Dombas if the greater part of the Ukrainian army is encircled. But it would be in some ways every bit as grave.

And it looks as if both of these events are progressing. at roughly the same speed. Remember what the Russian Defense Ministry said once about how they conduct operations rhythmically, everything working together in synchronized and in its time. Well, we're starting to see how that is playing out. Yeah, and the time period where all of this is going to play out is in the winter. Yeah. And it looks like the Russian military is once again targeting energy infrastructure.

Exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, that's going to have a compounding effect on the catastrophe that faces the Zelensky regime. Yes. Exactly, sir. Yeah. All right. We'll end the video there.

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