Northern Donetsk, 14th January
As of yesterday the Russian Ministry of Defence started to present an update about the extent of its control in the “Donetsk direction” on the map it uses for its daily briefing, and it can be seen below translated on to a Google map, as per the fashion at this site, represented as an orange line (broken where the Russian map suffers, in terms of clarity, from annotation). Also shown with a blue line is the Ukrainian reckoning as at 14th January, 2o23, via the mouthpiece of the General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine that is liveuamap.com.
As is the tradition (it seems) the Russian reckoning is behind the Ukrainian at what might appear to be key tracts of territory. As indicated, it could be said of the Russians that they do this as a matter of course, for whatever particular reason that is known only to them. It makes it especially important to grasp the significance of what the Russians want to be shown, and the author is particularly interested in the indication that their positions are as advanced as to be at the gates of Razdolovka. To have developed the front line to this location and being poised to cut the road between Artyomovsk (and the northern components of that conurbation) and Seversk might be more significant than being in the environs south and west of Soledar.
Kleshchiyevka shares a quality with Krasnaya Gora in OSINT-mongering social media in that it is now pressed up against the Russian advance. As can be seen, while the Ukrainian reckoning agrees with this, the Russians are not claiming adjacency to either settlement on their map. The protuberance that the Ukrainians are reporting in the vicinity of Kleshchiyevka is something of a surprise. Russian briefings will be looked at to see if they impart any corroborating evidence, and an update will be made.
Liveuamap also made a revision on 12th January regarding Russian positions around Maryinka in the Southern Donetsk direction, as captured in the image below. The author would understand this to be catching up with and conceding current realities (see the article, Keep Watching Southern Donetsk).
Update, 16th January, 2023:
Today the OSINT-mongers are causing much twitching in their audience by claiming the capture of Kleshchiyevka. We’ll probably be hearing about it being taken again some time in the future – with or without it passing back into Ukrainian hands in the intervening period.
Meanwhile, the actual Russian Ministry of Defence map was clearer when it was published on 16th January, as can be seen in the image on the right.
When it is translated on to a Google map, it suggests that Razdolovka has been occupied: a development that the OSINT-mongery isn’t reporting.
The clarity of today’s MoD map has allowed for the making of some marginal corrections to the translation, as the reader will notice:
