On July 29 and 30, Russian forces conducted five platoon-to-battalion-sized mechanized attacks in western Donetsk Oblast.
The willingness of the Russian military command to accept costly losses of armored vehicles without conducting a large-scale, multipronged offensive operation or making operationally meaningful progress in the western part of Donetsk Oblast is likely to strain the Russian military in the long term.
This is stated in the daily analysis of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Such local mechanized offensives are likely a manifestation of Russia's projected summer offensive - Russian forces likely do not have the broader operational capacity to mount a separate renewed offensive operation in Donetsk Oblast or elsewhere on the front this summer.
Continued Russian offensive operations are also costly to Ukrainian defenders and are likely intended to reduce Ukrainian capacity through attrition, whether or not they gain much ground.
North Korea may be expanding the volume and variety of weapons it provides to Russia.
The Kremlin is likely trying to concentrate Russian actors in the information space on social media sites that the Kremlin can more directly influence to directly control their rhetoric, which has caused some pushback from Russian ultranationalist military bloggers and opposition journalists.
On the night of July 29-30, Ukrainian forces attacked a Russian oil warehouse in Vozi, Kursk region.
The Russian government continues to support educational programs on "information and hybrid warfare" aimed at training Russians to conduct and counter information operations, use open source research methodology, and effectively analyze and counter hybrid threats to the Kremlin .
Russian officials and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) are advocating for the Kremlin to codify into Russian federal law a state ideology based on the idea that the sovereign Ukrainian state should not exist.
Russian forces have recently advanced near Chasov Yar and southwest of the city of Donetsk.
Authorities in St. Petersburg have joined other Russian regional authorities in increasing financial incentives for recruits to sign military service contracts.
On July 29, the British newspaper The Times published a story detailing how Russian authorities indoctrinate deported Ukrainian children through military-patriotic education programs.