Russian troops achieved one of the biggest breakthroughs of the war in eastern Ukraine, with some units making it through Kyiv’s primary defensive line just days ahead of President Donald Trump’s peace summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
Since September 2022, the war in Ukraine has largely been marked by slow, attritional warfare between entrenched combatants, with advances marked by meters rather than miles. Moscow has mastered this attritional form of fighting, using a combination of small assault squads, first-person view drones, artillery, and glide bombs to wear down Ukrainian fortifications slowly. Over the weekend, this strategy finally bore fruit when Russian forces achieved one of the largest breakthroughs of the war, advancing nearly 10 miles, past Ukraine’s main line of defenses in Donetsk oblast.
The pro-Ukrainian mapper DeepState, which compiles its maps from open-source intelligence and testimonies from Ukrainian soldiers, added the unprecedented advance to its map on Sunday, located between the two major axes of advance around the strongholds of Pokrovsk and Konstantynivka.
According to DeepState, the Russian army utilized its numerical superiority to identify a weak point in the line and ruthlessly exploited it. Soldiers advanced as far as the Dobropillya-Kramatorsk highway, one of Ukraine’s main logistical arteries. The outlet blamed local commanders, who it alleged were covering up the worsening situation.
“The situation is developing quite chaotically, because the enemy, having found gaps in the defense, is seeping into the depths, trying to consolidate quickly, accumulate for further advancement, while some individuals in the command of a certain brigade either do not understand the full depth of the problem, or present the situation as ‘controlled,’” it said in a post on Telegram. “However, the military themselves, who are holding the defense there and are trying to understand what is happening, do not agree with this.”
If events continue, DeepState warned that the city of Dobropillya, located behind Pokrovsk, could collapse, leaving the troops defending the latter surrounded.
Word quickly spread throughout the Ukrainian military and OSINT networks, triggering a panic. One of Ukraine’s most famous military commanders, Bohdan Krotevych, former commander of the Azov Brigade, gave an urgent warning to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about the situation.
“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. And this chaos has been growing for a long time, worsening with each passing day,” he said. “A stable line of combat contact, as such, effectively doesn’t exist.”
The current advances have left the city-strongholds of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad encircled and Konstantynivka semi-encircled, Krotevych said. The development would be among the most significant Russian tactical victories in the past few years if confirmed.
He went on to excoriate unnamed Ukrainian officers along the line who had allowed the deterioration.
“The systemic problem began with the depletion of reserves, the widespread fragmentation of units across the entire front line, reports of ‘captured villages’ being touted as victories amidst failures of entire sectors, the allocation of mobilization resources to ‘cronies,’ and the complete lack of strategic or even operational vision of the theater of operations among parts of the military leadership,” Krotevych said.
Bild writer Julian Ropcke, known for his fervent support for Kyiv, gave an even more blunt assessment.
“Calling it a strategic catastrophe would still be an understatement,” he said, adding that Kyiv doesn’t seem to be aware of what was happening, echoing Krotevych’s thesis that local commanders were misleading their superiors.
OSINT analyst Clement Molin published a map illustrating the severity of the breakthrough. It showed Russian forces were now behind Donetsk’s line of defenses, which had slowed its advance for nearly three and a half years of war. If Kyiv can’t manage to plug the gap, Russian troops could cut west or north, cutting off two of the anchors of the “New Donbas Line” of defenses.
In accordance with the sensitive military operations being carried out, official Russian and Ukrainian sources were murky about the exact details of the developments. Preliminary OSINT reports seemed to suggest that the initial push was made by Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups, or DRGs, special units trained to infiltrate enemy lines and wreak havoc. Whether concentrated regular units have been able to consolidate these gains is uncertain.
A Ukrainian military Telegram channel in Dobropillya suggested that Russian DRG units may operate within the city itself, a development that would mean an even larger breakthrough.
Russian forces mounted on motorcycles, a tactic they’ve spearheaded over the past few months, likely achieved the speed of the breakthrough. With armored vehicles more vulnerable than ever due to both sides’ omnipresent drone usage, each side has found it expedient to use the motorcycles’ mobility to maneuver small assault units quickly.
The breakthrough also illustrates the full extent of Ukraine’s severe manpower problems. Russia’s “Triple Chokehold” tactic — using a combination of small assault units, FPV drones, and glide bombs in tandem — has maintained near constant pressure on Ukrainian troops all across the front line. Fierce offensives over the past several months have spiked casualties on both sides, but Ukraine’s much smaller population is less able to cope.
Analysts have pointed out for months that Ukraine has increasingly relied on drones for flexible defense, with defensive lines manned by increasingly small teams. The weekend’s developments show the catastrophic effect of a collection of those teams being taken out, with Russian formations able to pour through the breakthrough. A lack of Ukrainian reserves prevents them from plugging severe breaks in the line.
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As OSINT analyst Pasi Paroinen pointed out, Ukraine’s lack of operational reserves means it must take reinforcements from other parts of the line, weakening those parts for Russia to exploit.
The increasingly critical situation for Ukraine leaves it in a worsening spot as Trump and Putin travel to Alaska to discuss the future of the war and Ukraine itself.
