Massive missile strikes by Russian troops on Ukraine are not connected with the appointment of Sergey Surovikin as commander of the joint group of Russian troops deployed against Ukraine, despite his experience as commander of the Russian Armed Forces in Syria, according to a report by analysts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for October 11.

"Surovikin's appointment will not lead to further 'Syrianization' of Russian operations in Ukraine because the battlespace in Ukraine is fundamentally different from the battlespace in Syria, and direct comparisons to Surovikin's Syrian 'playbook' obfuscate the fact that Russia faces very different challenges in Ukraine. Russia cannot further 'Syrianize' the war largely because of its failure to gain air superiority, which precludes its ability to launch the kind of massive carpet-bombing campaigns across Ukraine that it could, and did, conduct in Syria," the report says.

"Whoever was appointed as theatre commander would have overseen the October 10 cruise missile strikes, which Ukrainian intelligence reported had been planned as early as October 2 [and which Surovikin certainly did not plan, prepare for, and conduct on the day of his appointment]. The Russian MoD is evidently invested in repairing its public image, and the informational effects of the October 10 missile strikes and the appointment of Surovikin, a hero in the extremist nationalist Russian information space, are likely intended to cater to the most vocal voices in that space," the ISW says.

"The Russian Federation is likely extracting ammunition and other materiel from Belarusian storage bases – activity that is incompatible with setting conditions for a large-scale Russian or Belarusian ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus," the report notes.

"Belarusian equipment and supply movements to Crimea and Rostov Oblast indicate that Russian forces are less confident about the security of Russian ground lines of communication running through northern and western Luhansk Oblast given the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there. Ukraine's General Staff reiterated that it monitors Belarus and has not observed indicators of the formation of offensive groups in Belarus on October 11. Russian and or Belarusian forces remain unlikely to attack Ukraine from Belarus, as ISW has previously assessed," the report notes.

"Belarus remains a co-belligerent in Russia's war against Ukraine, nonetheless. Belarus materially supports Russian offensives in Ukraine and provides Russian forces with havens from which to attack Ukraine with precision munitions. Russia deployed 32 Shahed-136 drones to Belarus as of October 10 and that Russia will deploy eight more to Belarus by October 14," it says.

Russian sources, according to the ISW, claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensives east of the Oskil River and in the direction of Kreminna-Svatove. Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian troops continued ground attacks in northern and western Kherson Oblast. Russian forces, in turn, continued to conduct ground assaults in Donetsk Oblast.

"Russian reporting of explosions in Dzhankoy, Crimea, indicated panic over losing further logistics capabilities in Crimea following the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion," the ISW says.

Russian federal subjects are announcing new extensions and phases of mobilization in select regions, which may indicate that they have not met their mobilization quotas.