Victory Chronicles-DAY 548

Ukraine’s defense forces have gained success on the Novodanylivka – Novoprokopivka and Mala Tokmachka – Ocheretuvate fronts in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. “The Defence Forces were successful on the Novodanylivka – Novoprokopivka and Mala Tokmachka – Ocheretuvate fronts, consolidating their positions, inflicting fire damage with artillery on identified enemy targets, and carrying out counter-battery operations,” reported General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In addition, Ukraine’s Defense Forces continue to conduct offensive actions south of Bakhmut, consolidating their positions.

Over the past day, the enemy has inflicted seven missile and 47 air strikes and carried out 69 attacks from multiple rocket launchers on the positions of our troops and settlements, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a report as of 06:00 on Friday.

“As a result of the Russian terrorist attacks, unfortunately, there are dead and wounded among the civilian population. Residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure were destroyed,” the message posted on Facebook reads. In addition, the General Staff notes, on the night of August 25, the Russian Federation launched another missile and air strike on the territory of our state. Information about the consequences of this terrorist attack is still being clarified.

In Kyiv, residents walked around near paraded destroyed Russian tanks along the capital’s main street, showing the country’s resistance to Moscow’s attack. Others displayed other captured or damaged Russian military hardware on Khreshchatyk Street, the main boulevard that runs through Maidan Square to the Dnipro River. The Kyiv Post said that included in the “silent parade” display were 10 Russian tanks, 15 self-propelled artillery pieces, three anti-aircraft missile systems, six armored personnel carriers, three armored cars, two rocket artillery pieces, four infantry fighting vehicles, three light-tracked personnel carriers, and an R-77 air-to-air missile.

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces published a video showing their work on driving Russian forces out on approaches to Robotyne. Ukrainian SOF groups were among the first to drive Russian forces out on the approaches to Robotyne. These hostilities lasted over a week. Fighting took place in extremely difficult conditions, including constant fire from Russian artillery, a sky full of Russian drones, and extremely close fire contact with Russian forces, who tried in every possible way to hold their previously occupied area. The video includes footage of a close-range firefight and the evacuation of wounded SOF operators.

The Wagner Group will likely no longer exist as a quasi-independent parallel military structure following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s almost certain assassination of Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin, and reported Wagner logistics and security head Valery Chekalov on August 23. 

The death of Wagner’s central leadership disrupts Wagner’s ability to reverse the effects of the Kremlin’s and the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) campaign to weaken, subsume, and destroy the organization following the June 24 armed rebellion. The Russian MoD has reportedly established private military companies (PMCs) that have been recruiting current and former Wagner personnel to assume control over Wagner’s operations abroad. 

Russian sources claimed that the Kremlin refused to pay the Belarusian government for Wagner’s deployment to Belarus and that financial issues were already leading to reduced payments that were causing Wagner fighters to resign. Satellite imagery from August 1 and 23 shows that Wagner had dismantled almost a third of the tents at its camp in Tsel, Asipovichy, Belarus in the previous month, suggesting that the effort to weaken Wagner may have resulted in a notable flight of Wagner personnel from the contingent in Belarus.

Some milbloggers denied claims that Wagner fighters are dismantling their camp in Tsel, however. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on August 23 that an unspecified number of Wagner personnel at camps in Belarus began preparations to return to Russia following Prigozhin’s death. The central Wagner leadership had brought Wagner to the height of its independence during the offensive to capture Bakhmut and was attempting to retain some semblance of that independence in the aftermath of Wagner’s rebellion. 

The elimination of this central leadership likely ends any remaining means Wagner had to operate independently of the Russian MoD. It remains unclear whether the Kremlin intends for Wagner to completely dissipate or intends to reconstitute it as a much smaller organization completely subordinate to the Russian MoD. A third option—restoring Wagner as a quasi-independent organization under a new commander loyal to the Kremlin—is possible but unlikely.

Colonel Serhii Ilnytskyi, 53, the first deputy commander of Dmytro Yarosh’s Ukrainska Dobrovolcha Armia (Ukrainian Volunteer Army) and a member of the Kyiv City Council from the Europeyska Solidarnist (European Solidarity) party, was killed in action in Donbas. “He gave his life for Ukraine in battle. My friend, brother-in-arms, first deputy commander, commander of the “South” detachment, Colonel Serhii Ilnytskyi (“Sokil”),” Dmytro Yarosh wrote on Facebook.

The leader of the European Solidarity party, Petro Poroshenko, said that Ilnytskyi’s body had been evacuated from the front line and that the funeral would be held in Kyiv. “A huge loss for all of us,” he wrote on Facebook. – “He has been fighting for our Ukrainian Donbas since 2014. He died there, in Donbas, near Kurdiumivka.”

According to his official biography, Ilnytskyi took part in hostilities since 2014 and was an assistant to Dmytro Yarosh when he was a member of the Verkhovna Rada. After being wounded, he participated in the Invictus Games. He was the captain of the Ukrainian team at the INVICTUS Games in 2018 in Sydney, Australia. He competed in the simulator rowing category. He also became the prototype of the character “Serpen” (August) in the movie “Kiborhy”(Cyborgs) about the defense of the Donetsk airport, which he, too, defended. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ilnytskyi again took an active part in the fighting.

In 2023, he was appointed deputy commander of the Ukrainska Dobrovolcha Armia (Ukrainian Volunteer Army) of Dmytro Yarosh and headed the UDA’s South detachment as part of the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade. According to Yuriy Butusov, editor of the Censor.net media outlet, who knew Ilnytskyi, he participated in the liberation of Kherson Oblast and the defense of Bakhmut. In 2022, he was awarded the Order of Merit III degree.

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