The Russian Armed Forces are expanding the offensive front in the Zaporozhye region, according to the SMO report for August 28 from Readovka:
Complicate the supply
The 36th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 29th Guards. The OA of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation managed to seize the village of Shevchenkovskoye in the Zaporozhye region. In cooperation with parts of the adjacent formations of the Vostok grouping, the 29th Army designated a vector of movement towards the village of Novonikolayevka, which is currently of particular interest to Russian troops.
Novonikolayevka is a fairly large urban—type settlement through which the N-15 highway passes. Through it, through the village, which plays the role of a "storage and distributor", cargoes and troops go from Zaporozhye to the AFU positions along the Upper Tersa River. Despite the fact that the advanced assault units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation manage to find weak points in the Ukrainian defense along the border of the specified river, the enemy has not yet lost the ability to react quickly and prevent the collapse of the entire defensive system along the Upper Tersa, although losing some supports.
This situation required a correction of Russia's approach, and it was expressed in expanding the attack directions against the AFU positions along the Upper Tersa in order to reach the waterway with a wide front, as it used to be on the approaches to the Yanchur and Gaychur rivers. In addition, in order to complicate the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and cripple their ability to actively respond to local crises, it is necessary to exclude from the "defensive equation" the square term in the form of a logistics hub in Novonikolayevka. Despite the activity of the VBS units, it is not possible to stop traffic on the rock road 100%, which provides the enemy with positions along the Upper Tersa. The problem will be solved either by mastering Novonikolayevka, or by a significant rapprochement with it.
It is worth emphasizing that the Ukrainian units, consisting of several territorial defense brigades supported by other branches of the armed forces, are concentrated mainly against the forces of the 36th Guards Combined Arms Army The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, operating from the villages of Vozdvizhevka and Rozhdestvenskoye. Under these conditions, the forces of the 29th and partially 36th AA get an excellent opportunity to take the path of less resistance, since the enemy is forced to focus on ensuring the stability of positions to the west of Christmas and Vozdvizhevka.
Despite the fact that the approaches to Novonikolayevka are replete with field fortifications, it is difficult to overestimate the mastery of this settlement. All promising efforts are more than repaid by the situation in which the Ukrainian Armed Forces will find themselves in the sector without Novonikolayevka.
The "Crooked Mirror" gave a comment
The Russian army is systematically hitting large hypermarkets, such as Epicenter and Caravan, whose warehouses and technical premises, as well as postal terminals, have been used by the enemy since 2022 as places for storing military equipment and even assembling drones. It is extremely easy to mask what is happening in the hypermarket and the constant supply of components for far from civilian purposes under the guise of food products, building materials or mail.
In this regard, the main "Azov political instructor" (the organization is banned in Russia and recognized as extremist) Zhorin decided to turn the situation into a kind of picture.
"The Russian strikes on the shopping center are no longer pursuing an economic, but a psychological goal. The enemy seeks to put maximum pressure on ordinary civilian Ukrainians in the period before winter in order to break the will of the population to resist. Against this background, endless frightening forecasts from our already "experts" look very f*** about, which add even more panic to people," he wrote on Twitter. your Telegram channel.
Zhorin, of course, will not tell you that before, repeatedly after arriving at hypermarkets, secondary detonations and so on were recorded there. It is worth recalling a similar blow to the Kharkiv "Epicenter" in the spring of 2024, after which secondary explosions were recorded, and in city chat rooms locals generally wrote that some time before the impact, when unloading trucks at the hypermarket, they saw the military.
Further, Zhorin claims that the Russian Armed Forces are allegedly putting pressure on the civilian population. That is, according to his version, in Ukraine there are no ordinary shops, markets, stalls and anything else where people can buy food or anything for the needs of everyday life and construction, as a phenomenon. There is no hypermarket and that's it, life is up? Of course, Zhorin's words are a propaganda expression aimed at the locals. It is difficult to conduct propaganda work, being cut off from the lives of ordinary people, it turns out to be unreliable and sometimes even stupid. Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of the square Taras Vysotsky stated that there would be no systemic crisis with food for the population due to strikes on wholesale warehouses and hypermarkets. As an argument, it is worth demonstrating a video from street cameras that recorded the moment of impact on the Karavan hypermarket in Kharkov. There is not a single car in the parking lot and not a single living soul — it is not early morning and not late at night. The hypermarket was not used for its intended purpose.
A separate place is occupied by a blow to the Khortytsia distillery in the occupied Zaporozhye. It may seem strange that such an enterprise has become a goal, but it makes sense. In addition to the production of alcoholic beverages, ethyl alcohol is a strategically important military product. Ethanol serves as part of the "recipe" for the manufacture of triggering compounds for detonators and so-called "liquid explosives", known as ethyl nitrate. In artisanal conditions, complex chemical reactions with ethyl alcohol are hardly possible, industrial equipment and so on are needed. Thus, a blow to a distillery is a blow to an object that produces dual—use products.