General Staff: during the day there were 161 clashes at the front, the most active battles were in the Kurakhiv direction

Over the past 24 hours, 161 combat clashes have been recorded at the front, with the most active Russian troops advancing in the Kurakhiv direction, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported in the morning briefing on October 14.

“In the Kupyansk direction, 19 skirmishes took place near Petropavlivka, Pishchany, Vyshnevoy, Kopanok and Lozova. In the Lymansky direction, according to updated information, the enemy attacked 19 times near Grekivka, Druzhelyubivka, Novosadovo, Nevsky, Terni, and Torsky… In the Pokrovsky direction, our defenders repelled 25 enemy assaults in the areas of Sukhy Yar, Lysivka, Promin, and Selidove settlements. In the direction of Kurakhivka, the Defense Forces repelled 39 enemy attacks near Zhelanny Drugo, Kreminnaya Balka, Izmailivka, Novoselidivka, Kurakhivka, Hirnyk, Maksimilianivka, Kostyantynivka, and Katerynivka,” the message reads.

In addition, according to the General Staff, battles were fought in the Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Toretsk, Vremiv, Orikhov and Dnieper directions.

“According to detailed information, yesterday the enemy carried out 53 airstrikes against the positions of Ukrainian units and populated areas, dropping 92 anti-aircraft missiles. In addition, he fired more than 3,700 shots, 90 of them from rocket salvo systems,” the General Staff said.

In its report published on October 13, the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted that Russian forces have recently resumed tactical offensive attacks near the border of Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions and have achieved tactical successes in localized offensives, “but so far this activity is not part of a larger operational offensive operation to support the broader Russian offensive operation in the west of Donetsk region”.

In an October 9 report, ISW concluded that the Russian command likely wanted to accelerate the pace of mechanized offensives in Ukraine in order to make progress before autumn rains hampered the movement of equipment.

Analysts believe that the main goal is to gain a foothold in front-line settlements that can be used as a bridgehead for further operations, for example, to capture Kurakhovo or Pokrovsk.

On the evening of October 10, the DeepState project reported that the Russian army immediately captured three villages on the road to Myrnograd in the Donetsk region – Mykolaivka, Chervyn Yar and Krutiy Yar. Judging by the map, the aggressor has about a kilometer left to the south-eastern outskirts of Mirnograd – Pokrovsk’s satellite city.

Later, analysts noted that soon the city will feel the pressure of the aggressor and his attempts to break through to the southern outskirts, and his successes are often explained by the poor quality of the fortifications on the part of the Armed Forces.