Sviatohirsk

The Dobropillia claw was stopped.

The Sviatohirsk claw was smashed.

Now Ukraine must paralyze Russian logistics, so Moscow cannot restart the push.

And that is going to be the thing that will keep them, like, hitting behind the lines have-- as they've done with drones, has just been remarkably successful in defanging them.

For weeks, the Russian milit- Ministry of Defense had been painting the map red.

They reported that the Russian army was advancing, that the towns of Sviatohirsk and Kupyansk were taken, that Ukrainian forces were being encircled and destroyed.

There was just, um, you know, one, one little problem there.

While the Russian generals were pinning Hero of Russia medals to their chests in Moscow, the commander of the Ukrainian Third Assault Brigade was casually recording selfie videos from the exact center of the cities the Russians claimed to control.

Why did Vladimir Putin announce an important military victory that never actually happened? At the end of last month, Russia's president made a bold claim.

His forces had captured the Ukrainian town of Sviatohirsk.

Asserting that his understanding of the situation on the front line was pretty objective, Putin told the world that the town had fallen to Moscow's forces just the day before.

Some analysts thought the timing of Putin's announcement was no accident.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe had just come to Moscow to warn the Kremlin that the invasion was failing and Putin should consider a peace deal.

Now, if the Russian president had been correct, the advance would've been notable indeed, and proof that it was the CIA director who had got it wrong about the direction of the war.

Sviatohirsk lies on route to Liman, and from there, the Fortress Belt, the line of cities anchoring Ukraine's defense of the entire Donbas region.

By taking Sviatohirsk, Putin's forces would've gained a real springboard to capture Liman and then fling themselves harder still at the Fortress Belt itself.

There's none of this sort of, uh...

As you said, Conrad, if we juxtapose what happened in Yemen at the moment this week to some of the battles happening in, uh, the city of even, a- according to the reports, Svjatohirsk or Kupiansk, which the Russians have taken from the Ukrainians, there's battles in every single, uh, every single podval, every single basement.

All of the underground parking lots are used as basically the, the defensive, um, the defensive fortifications, et cetera.

You didn't see that in Mokah.

And that's important because then something else happened.

On September 7th, Andrei Belitsky appeared in Sviatogorsk with the Lavra visible.

He puts it on the radio.

So Russia claimed that they took Sviatogorsk several weeks ago, that Sviatogorsk was all Russian, and that they held it.

And the Ukrainians in that area specific, using the Nazi brigades, the Azov brigades, led by Beletsky, the strongest nationalist, Nazist representative in Ukraine today, Andrei Beletsky.

He appears in Svyatogorsk with the Lavra in the background and says, oh yeah, the Russians aren't here.

That's what Church of England did centuries ago is what I understand, you know, to create the Church of England.

Somebody couldn't get divorced or something like that, but I don't know that history.

Russian and open source sources continue to report unconfirmed Ukrainian counterattacks in the area there.

Uh, obviously, I mentioned Andrei Belitzky's visit to Sviatohirsk earlier.

That's about twenty kilometers northwest of Liman.

The spokesperson for a Ukrainian brigade operating in the area said Russian forces are accumulating troops and increasing the number of assaults in the Liman area, but are not advancing due to Ukrainian strikes.

Major disputes over territory and security guarantees remain unresolved, and the latest diplomatic push has not yet produced a breakthrough.

The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Ukrainian evidence disproved Russian claims that Russian forces had seized Sviatohirsk and said inaccurate reporting is creating operational risks.

ISW also reported Ukrainian advances near Slovyansk and Kostiantynivka-Druzhkivka.

Ukrainian forces continued long-range strikes against Russian military assets and oil infrastructure.

I highlight the last two as undated footage released over the weekend reportedly showed Russian strikes on civilians and emergency services in the Dnipro and Kherson regions, although we can't verify that those images relate to the weekend strikes.

In the Donbas and the command of Ukraine's Third Army Corps, Andriy Biletsky personally visited Sviatohirsk to refute the recent Russian claims, including by Putin himself, that it had been captured.

That's ten kilometers northwest of Lyman at the top of the fortress belt.

The city is said to be a rear area zone for the Corps and is controlled by fighters of Ukraine's Sixtieth Mechanized Brigade.

So we're going to be discussing that.

Obviously, the situation on the ground as the Russians take Svyatogorsk, getting closer and closer to the Svyatogorsk Lavra.

Of course, obviously, in the church news segment of the show, we're going to be discussing the latest news from the Svyatogorsk Lavra about the murder of Mankovar Sanofi and whatnot.

We're seeing clashes between SBU and Ukrainian military intelligence in Ukraine.

So it seems that the Kiev project for an independent Ukraine is continuing to collapse in on itself, or at least Beginning to, of course, NATO continues to rattle the saber against Russia with a whole host of new escalations.

But again...

Finally, we're getting closer and closer to the liberation of this wonderful Lavra that means a lot to us here at World War Now and Ether Hour and all of that.

So I'd love your thoughts on the airline situation, the situation on the front line in Svyatogorsk and, of course, this Leipzig situation.

In Northern Donbas, there's been a lot of fighting around Liman.

But we've just had information that the Russians have captured an actually very well-known town called Sviatogorsk.

It's well-known because it is a very important center of Russian orthodoxy.

And there's a very famous monastery there.