ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 22, 2023

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

• Russian forces are funneling additional forces to the Avdiivka front despite ongoing challenges with frontal mechanized assaults and the failure of a renewed push on October 19-20.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 22.
• Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on October 22.
• The nationalist pro-war Russian information space is reckoning with the possibility of a major demographic decline by weaponizing anti-migrant rhetoric.
• A prominent Russian milblogger and frontline commander criticized Russian top-down censorship campaigns.
• Deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin's ideological and rhetorical campaign against the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has largely become decoupled from the issue of the Wagner Group and appears to have outlived Prigozhin himself.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 22.
• Russian authorities are intensifying mobilization efforts targeting Central Asian migrant communities.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to use cultural and education programs to forcibly Russify Ukrainian children.

Authors: Angelica Evans, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, and Mason Clark.

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