Ukraine surged some of its most combat-hardened forces to the eastern Donetsk region to blunt a Russian advance some fear could lead to a large-scale collapse on that part of the front. The battlefield moves come days ahead of a planned meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders are expected to discuss a plan to end the war that could include freezing the front lines where they are.
“The situation remains complex and dynamic,” said the First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine, which was recently dispatched to reinforce the area. “The enemy is attempting to advance in this direction at the cost of significant losses in manpower and equipment. Units within the corps have planned and carried out actions to block enemy forces in the area.”
Contacted by The War Zone, Azov officials declined to offer further details.
Over the past three days, Russia has advanced north in a two-pronged push, its deepest penetration in about a year. However, there are differing assessments of the situation within Ukrainian ranks. President Volodymyr Zelensky and military spokespeople downplay the advance while some troops and military observers are much more alarmed.
“Russian units have advanced 10 kilometers deep in several spots,” Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday. “They all have no equipment, only weapons in their hands. Some have already been found, some destroyed, some taken prisoner. We will find the rest and destroy them in the near future.”
Zelensky has been warning about Russia gathering troops for an offensive in an unspecified region for days.
“The Defense Forces are taking effective measures to stop the advance of Russian troops on the Dobropillia and Pokrovsk directions, where the Russian forces have concentrated over 110,000 personnel,” claimed Andriy Kovalov, the spokesperson of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Despite these assessments, some Ukrainian troops and Ukrainian and Western military observers are taking a more dire view. The concern is that Russian forces could accumulate behind their gains, then swing to the west. That could cut off a large pocket of Ukrainian troops in a move that could lead to deeper advances into Ukrainian territory.
“Reports from many Ukrainian sources of a potentially catastrophic Russian breakthrough toward Dobropilla in the Donetsk region, with advance Russian troops cutting off the Dobropilla-Kramatorsk road,” Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov noted on X. “Unless stopped rapidly this has the potential to have very serious consequences.”
Zelensky’s former press spokesperson raised similar concerns.
“Ukraine is deploying its most experienced fighters to the front,” Iuliia Mendel stated on X Tuesday. “‘Azov’ troops have taken positions along one of the most difficult defensive lines on the Pokrovsk front. There is a serious risk that the last two major cities in the area — Sloviansk and Kramatorsk — could be cut off from the greater Dnipro region, leaving Kharkiv as the only supply route. If Ukraine cannot eliminate several hundred Russian soldiers advancing on foot and far from their own logistics, it will be extremely difficult to hold the region. Many of my contacts and military sources confirm this.”
“Currently, the enemy has managed, through constant pressure with a superior number of infantry, to advance into the settlements of Kucheriv Yar and Zolotyi Kolodiaz, where they are accumulating forces for further success,” warned the DeepState open source collective, which has close ties to the Ukrainian military. “Along their route, the Muscovites are trying to establish their positions and consolidate their presence in the area.”
The situation is so dire that Bohdan Krotevych, a Ukrainian National Guard lieutenant colonel and former Azov chief of staff, wrote an open message to Zelensky on X.
“I sincerely don’t know what exactly is being reported to you, but I’m informing you: on the Pokrovsk – Kostiantynivka line, without exaggeration, it’s complete chaos,” he wrote. “And this chaos has been growing for a long time, worsening with each passing day… A stable line of combat contact, as such, effectively doesn’t exist. Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad are almost surrounded. Kostiantynivka is in a semi-encirclement. The enemy is advancing toward Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka.”
While the trend lines are not good for Ukraine, there has not yet been a collapse in the region, a well-known Ukrainian milblogger and reserve officer who goes by the pseudonym Tatarigami noted on X.
“The situation more closely resembles events of May 2024, when Russian forces slipped through unprepared Ukrainian defenses along the border and advanced nearly 10 kilometers,” he explained. “That incursion was eventually contained and remained a localized pocket.”
This time around, however, “there is insufficient information to determine whether Ukrainian forces have the resources to contain Russian forces,” Tatarigami posited. “The Russian grouping assembled in the Pokrovsk direction reportedly numbers more than 100,000 troops, raising the risk of further expansion.”
Russia’s overwhelming manpower advantage has been a big factor in this advance, observed Michael Kofman, a well-regarded military analyst and senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Russia’s advance near Dobropillia reflects the broader problematic dynamic, characterized by a lack of cohesive defensive lines, and undermanned units holding terrain, which can result in gradual then seemingly sudden shifts,” Kofman explained on X.
Given the ubiquitous nature of drone coverage, Russia has been relying not on armor assaults but on many small groups of infantry circumventing overstressed Ukrainian defenses, Kofman noted.
“Ukraine has been holding the front with a deficit of infantry, and lack of reserves by depending on drone units,” he explained. “This has bought time, but is not sufficient to stabilize the front, or compensate for more fundamental challenges with force management and force generation.”
Time may not be on Ukraine’s side as both sides jockey for positions ahead of Friday’s Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska to iron out a peace deal. The American leader has suggested that any agreement will involve Ukraine giving up territory.
During his press conference on Tuesday, Zelensky said Ukraine “will not leave Donbas. For the Russians, Donbas is a springboard for a future new offensive,” he told reporters. “If we leave Donbas, we will open a third war. A few years – and Putin will have an open path to Zaporizhia, Dnipro regions, and Kharkiv.”
In the coming days, more details will emerge about the latest push by Russia, which has been unsuccessfully trying for more than a year to capture the Ukrainian stronghold of Pokrovsk, another key logistics hub in that region. Although this effort could eventually flounder too, for Putin, the optics of an advance could not come at a better time.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com