Day 425: April 24The freshest reports suggest that Russians decided not to wait until Ukrainians launch their offensive and launched a series of attacks first. As a result, Russian forces managed to increase their bridgehead in front of Dorozhnianka and Marfopil. Closer positions also allowed Russians to start targeting Ukrainian positions in the unnamed settlement in front of Marfopil. The main goal of these actions is to not give Ukrainians enough time to prepare and force Ukrainians to engage the accumulated forces prematurely. And Russian sources are reporting significant concentrations of troops, namely up to 10 thousand assaultmen only around Huliapole.In the Kherson region, Ukrainians have increased their bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to the point where many Russian sources started raising the alarm. Previously, Russian forces continued to occupy and establish observation posts in the residential areas of the islands in the Dnipro River’s delta. The first clashes for control over the islands started when Russians attacked the bridge to Karantynyi Island. This did not help, as Ukrainians gradually pushed Russians from the Velykyi Potiomkin Island. Shortly, Ukrainians also established control over the proximate island with a lot of places for docking. However, the biggest news by far became the fact that Ukrainians are present in the residential area of one of the biggest and most important islands in the region – the so-called Antonivsky Island. Such substantial control over the eastern bank of the river gives a lot of freedom for the Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups. This 20-km wide bridgehead is already hard to control, so if Ukrainians establish control over the remaining residential areas and get closer to the mainland, then a lot of Ukrainian sabotage teams will slip through and assist in the main phase of the counteroffensive operation by destroying strategic objects and critical railways and bridges.Several days ago, Ukrainians also made the third test of their ballistic missile system Hrim-2. The target became an unspecified object in Kerch. The rocket was shot down, but everyone understands that this is just a test, and the real attack would be concealed behind a massive drone and missile strike. The most important takeaway is that Ukrainians established at least three positions for launching ballistic missiles: Odesa, Kherson, and Zaporizhia. The targets of the strikes were also objects in the vicinity of critical ground lines of communication, such as the Crimean Bridge and crucial railway stations in other cases.And Ukrainians continue launching drones on Crimea as well. Today, two drones hit the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. Military analysts are saying that the main goal of these seemingly ineffective drone attacks in small groups is to keep their finger on the pulse and understand the current disposition and capabilities of the Russian air defense. Ideally, Ukrainian commanders should see a decrease in the air defense density because Ukrainians took significant steps to force Russians to stretch their air defense.For example, today, Ukrainians successfully destroyed a Russian oil depot in the Luhansk region with a drone attack. Russian sources also reported that today at least 3 Ukrainian drones reached Moscow. Interestingly, they were not shot down, they just ran out of gas. Russian military panicked and temporarily closed the sky over the military bases around Moscow. Russians have already started relocating their air defense from the front to protect the sky over Moscow, and such drone attacks are aimed at making sure that they continue doing it at the expense of Zaporizhia and Crimea. Russian analysts are warning that once Ukrainians are ready to launch the main phase of the counteroffensive, they will send swarms of drones to overwhelm Russian air defense in the region, and once the air defense is down, they will conduct extensive HIMARS strikes and use ballistic missiles Hrim-2 to take out Russian supplies right when they are going to need them the most.