Heard a lot of praise today both for Surivikin and a Teplinsky working in the Kherson direction. Surovikin for finally ordering the construction of proper defensive structures and lines to withstand Ukrainian assaults for the foreseeable future both in the Lyman direction and the Kherson direction - an act that has already paid dividends, as Ukraine's offensives in the Kherson region bring little success at great cost and Teplinsky (active in Kherson) for the same thing, going as far as "personally" building trenches.
But who's Teplinsky? We haven't heard much of him, since there's scarce mention of him (though he's been pictured giving medals).
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Well there's a face for the name. Colonel-General Mikhail Yurievich Teplinsky, born in Donetsk, he's a veteran of the First Chechen War (probably second as well) and has been with the VDV for a long time. He was recently appointed Commander of the Airborne Troops (AKA Commander of the VDV) around June 18 of this year, replacing Andrey Serdyukov after he had the genius idea of taking a light assault force that had already miraculously captured Hostomel Airport and held it for days, and assaulting a heavily defended city several times. His presence near Kherson confirms heavy VDV presence around that area (not that we didn't know of this), but this man may be to thank for the Russian's recent success in repelling nearly all UAF offensives.
A lot of Russian sources praised him when they talked about the UAF's latest attack, which they claim caused up to 150 casualties in personnel (wounded & killed) and dozens of tanks, IFVs and technicals. Russian losses were much lower, despite the shower of Smerch rockets and other artillery pieces. For now these aren't "real attacks", but really just reconnaissance in force (probably shouldn't do this in a wide open field when you have a very clear artillery disadvantage, but I'm not on the ground so whatever).
Near Lyman, rumors that I don't believe say that the UAF has set the deadline of October 17th to assault Svatove, and has assembled at least 40,000 personnel for this effect. Much is being built in terms of fortifications and trenches on the Russian side, so I don't believe this would be attainable even if it was real unless the UAF was willing to take catastrophic casualties. Any further attacks by the UAF will be even more costly than they were before as Surovikin seems to understand that fortifications are still a requirement of warfare and not an option. But who knows, such an attack may never materialize - sources have claimed the UAF was building up forces near Zaporizhie for ages but no real attacks have materialized, just more recon and small river crossing attempts.
I am ending this post by wishing good luck to the Mobilizer of Moscow, Igor Strelkov. I am however saddened to say that he has gotten rid of his funny mustache and replaced it with a soy goatee. Very disappointed. Most likely he'll be in some PR role where he will never fire his rifle, but in case he goes back to doing glow-ops
and massacring civilians like the good old days in Chechnya or goes as an officer, I'll praise him for at least putting his money where his mouth is, like him or not, he's been there for the separatist movement from the start.
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