I ended up in this situation as well, as bizarre as it is that Jolla will allow Sailfish to happily list all the installed apps as something to be removed, and not be able to predict a “Can not upgrade” situation or the subsequent brickage.
Be that as it may, I gained a new respect for those messages, because after flashing the rescue mode and going in with telnet, this is the kind of stuff I see in the log file
May 21 09:30:36 Xperia10III sailfish-upgrade-ui[4773]: Package: harbour-callrecorder;0.7.4-3;aarch64;installed,
May 21 09:30:36 Xperia10III [RPM][12613]: scriptlet %preun(harbour-callrecorder-0.7.4-3.aarch64) failure: 2
May 21 09:30:36 Xperia10III [RPM][12613]: erase harbour-callrecorder-0.7.4-3.aarch64: failure
May 21 09:30:36 Xperia10III [RPM][12613]: 1 elements failed, 1 scripts failed
May 21 09:30:36 Xperia10III sailfish-upgrade-ui[4773]: Distribution upgrade error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: Stopping service...
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
error: %preun(harbour-callrecorder-0.7.4-3.aarch64) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
error: harbour-callrecorder-0.7.4-3.aarch64: erase failed
I removed that over telnet, apparently successfully, but can’t continue the investigation right now.
Is there a way to use pkcon or whatever to retry the upgrade? I seem to have network routing issues with the phone attached, like all the internet is between my desktop and phone and nothing else, so that’s fun too.