In this thread I will go over each part of the Pokrovs'k front, from Hirnyk to Hrodivka to Arkhanhel's'ke, analyzing the current situation at the contact line, as well as trying to predict both sides' strategies in the near future.
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Let's start easy with the Arkhanhel's'ke section, which has only seen a Russian attack in months now. The direction can as such be considered stable. The result of the attack in question is unknown, but we know that a Ukrainian PoW was captured.
The Vozdvyzhenka direction has also been very quiet for quite a lot now, as the main Russian effort has shifted to the west. There were no geolocations lately here.
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In Yelizavetivka Russian infantrymen were recorded in the easternmost outskirts of the village some weeks ago, but we haven't heard any other source talking about any breakthroughs or even attacks in this direction, so this front can also be considered relatively calm.
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Hrodivka. Here the situation is much worse. Over the course of more than a month the Russians not only captured most of the town, but also crossed the Zhuravka river, pushing back the Ukrainians from important trench systems on the dominant hill.
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At Novohrodivka, after the loss of the settlement the Ukrainians were able to contain Russian attacks. As of now the Ukrainians are fully controlling the 1st line behind the settlement. Attacks on Lysivka and at the railway have also been contained successfully for now.
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Marynivka sector. The village was abandoned soon after the fall of Novohrodivka, which put it into an operational encirclement. From then on the Russians slowly entered and cleared the village and the trench systems south. In the picture is the situation as of today.
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Selydove - Mykhailivka sector. After initial Ukrainian disorganization in August, the units there, with the help of reinforcements, managed to almost completely halt Russian advancements, inflicting serious casualties on the enemy.
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Worth noting is the invaluable help of the 15th Brigade "Kara-Dag" and its 2nd Battalion "Ghost of Khortytsya"'s drones, which thwarted many Russian attacks in the area and systematically destroyed enemy manpower. The situation in the city itself is stable for now.
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Together with Hrodivka, Tsukuryne is the direction that worries me the most now. After the quick fall of Ukrayinsk, the Russians breached the line behind the settlement and captured the "Selydivs'ka" terikon west of Ukrayinsk.
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As of today there have been different attempts by the Russians to capture the vital railway with armoured and infantry attacks, which could've well been successful. The railway line is vital to hold because west of it are little to no trenches and villages to hold.
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Hirnyk sector. Constant infantry attacks are recorded here, and the city is constantly under bombing, though other than a flag on the very outskirts of the town and Russian reports, there have been no confirmed instances of Russians inside the town.
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Together with Kurakhivka, this city has to be held at all costs to limit Russian advancements near the Nevels'ke pocket and for the same reason as Tsukuryne railway: west are only small villages and decent trenches to hold. That is, if the Ukrainians retreat in good order.
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That's it for this thread. As you may have noticed I'm not doing these often because of really tight time constraints, but I promise there will be much more interesting threads coming out as soon as I'll have a little more time at my disposal, so stay tuned 👀
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🇺🇦⚔️🇷🇺 Day 1300, comprehensive frontline and rear situation report: territorial changes, trends, strategies and objectives of both sides, fortifications.
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Zaporizhzhia Oblast', Stepnohirsk sector.
Russian forces continue offensive operations in the sector, despite generally low media coverage.
The Russians gather up in Plavni's center to move through the gray zone to northern Plavni, and accumulate there. After this, they try to move into southern Prymorske, but are eliminated in the accumulation phase or cleared out by frequent Ukrainian infantry raids.
The Russians also often try to move through the kill zone in the fields north of Kamyanske, but the area is open enough for Ukrainian drone operators to control well and eliminate any movement, causing high casualties to the Russians.
Further northeast, the Russians constantly attempt to move into the 3rd microdistrict. This is because the district is composed of still mostly intact high rise buildings, that can be used for a safer accumulation for further assault operations.
From the 3rd microdistrict, the Russians seem to prefer attacking Ahrarna St. in southern Stepnohirsk.
Because of this predictability, the Ukrainians are zeroed in and constantly counterattack with all fire methods available.
Because of little successes evidenced after trying to take Stepnohirsk head-on, the Russians are slowly shifting their attention eastwards. An accumulation is recorded northeast of Kamyanske in the indicated area.
In general, the Ukrainians seem to be effectively holding the borders, combining fire damage with active defense, and achieving a favorable ratio of casualties with the Russian side. Russian successes here, at the moment, are not significant in any way.
White = trenches
Yellow = ditches
Blue = dragon's teeth
Gray = barbed wire
In the Uspenivka sector, Russian forces are advancing through vast rural areas. The Ukrainians can do little to nothing to counter this because of the almost total lack of manpower in this particular direction, that has not seen activity since 2022, and from which many units were transferred to other areas deemed more critical.
The trenches you see in this direction are either empty, because of the critical lack of men to man them, or unused, because they are outdated relative to drone warfare, as they are situated in the middle of fields and uncovered.
At the moment, fighting is ongoing for Olhivske, and Russian forces came close to Novoivanivka, for which fighting will likely soon start.
A bit north, after the capture of Zaporizke without much resistance, the village of Novomykolaivka was captured soon after. Russian forces are expected to continue along this small valley to Kalynivske, which suffered heavy FAB bombardments last week.
Near fortified Berezove, Russian forces decided to bypass both this village and Ternove, seemingly after encountering resistance, and advanced significantly between the 2 villages in the treelines.
This forced the Ukrainians to retreat from Ternove, for which fighting is ongoing, in favor of some outdated fortifications just north of it, which, as said multiple times, provide only an extremely small advantage.
Lyman and the 3rd battle for the city at 5km on the horizon.
Russian 🇷🇺 plans, Ukrainian 🇺🇦 defenses, logistics, and what's next.
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Lyman is a medium-sized town located in the northern corner of Donetsk Oblast' and counted about 20,000 inhabitants in 2022.
Immediately after the start of the invasion, while the Russians were able to advance with almost no resistance in Luhansk and eastern Kharkiv Oblasts, they encountered very strong resistance in Donetsk Oblast' along strong and prepared defensive lines, reinforced for 8 years since 2014.
Nonetheless, after being pushed out of northern Ukraine and having scaled down their plans to capture Ukrainian-controlled Donbas, the Russians immediately recognized the importance of precisely 2 cities to reach their goals: the cities of Lyman and Izyum.
Control over these two cities allowed the Russians to pose an extremely serious threat to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the two "capitals" of Ukrainian-controlled Donbas, from the northeast and northwest.
Old "panic fortifications" built facing westwards from Slovyansk and Kramatorsk can still be easily found to this day, proving this strong problem that the Ukrainians faced.
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In August 2022, in fact, the Ukrainians started a small scale "preparation"counteroffensive south of Izyum, with the likely aim of pushing the Russians back to the Siversky Donets river, to strenghten Donbas' northern flank.
Just a month later, the successful September 2022 counteroffensive started exactly in this general sector, with the aim of reaching the Oskil river to finally secure the Donbas, understanding that a frontal attack was already impossible at this time and that the flanks were their only vulnerability.
Izyum city was recaptured on September 12th with almost no Russian resistance, and Lyman on October 1st, with the Russians retreating disorganizedly and with losses under threat of encirclement to Zarichne.
Summing everything, in total the project took about 2 weeks of mapping, or about 30 hours if I hadn't stopped (haven't counted exactly, that's an estimate).
In the project is included just about everything:
- Trenches visible from updated satellite imagery ESRI
- World War 2 trenches and emplacements
- Singular foxholes
- Invisible trench systems under foliage, only visible through Planet imagery
- Dragon's teeth obstacles
The covered area goes from the village of Torske to Kreminna, totaling 175 km².
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This thread won't really be a standard one, but rather some sort of "gallery" with photos and descriptions of different kinds of interesting things I found in the forest and the trenches dug in it.
The Zolotyi Kolodyaz catastrophe. For whoever is asking "what the hell", "why" and "how".
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This thread will be more raw than the others. No sugarcoating, 101% objectivity.
As discussed in my previous thread, there are multiple reasons for this breakthrough, the main of which are:
- completely inadequate command
- sheer amount of Russian resources that were committed
- Ukrainian disorganization
- New Russian mobile groups that simply bypass scattered Ukrainian resistance points.
This breakthrough was NOT opened because of 1 reason in particular, but all of them.
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The main tactic of the Russians in this direction is almost completely based on infantry, very likely with motorized "attachments" like bikes and motorcycles. No mechanized component was noticed.
At the moment, according to my information, the breakthrough is packed full of Russian foot infantry, who are accumulating, we can easily guess, without any type of Ukrainian resistance, and then, with the same amount of resistance, simply walking or having a motorcycle ride to new positions further north.
At Zolotyi Kolodyaz', Russia 🇷🇺 had first contact with Ukraine 🇺🇦's New Donbas Line, and its DRGs broke through it for the first time, with the Ukrainians suffering from catastrophic manpower shortages.
In the long term, this might endanger all of Ukrainian-controlled Donbas.
A damage assessment and technical strategical overview of the situation.
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The story starts on July 21th, when, according to DeepState, Russian DRGs were recorded east of Nove Shakhove.
Everything has been kept quiet since then, with neither side releasing any information whatsoever, and with my sources, too, fully respecting operational silence.
Despite this, in the "dark", the Russians kept creeping forward and continued to send more and more DRGs deeper, eventually rendering the situation similar to what we have in Pokrovsk, where Russian DRGs are constantly recorded and destroyed even in the center of the city. Progressively, the breakthrough was expanded on all sides.
As of the evening of August 6th, local channels finally reported shooting battles in Zolotyi Kolodyaz, 7km from the last known Russian position.
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Let's break down the confusion on what exactly causes these breakthroughs. I identified 4 reasons:
1. Catastrophic manpower shortage in the Ukrainian ranks in this sector, initiating a loop of disorganized retreat ---> Russian breakthroughs ---> lengthening of the front ---> manpower shortage ---> disorganized retreat.
In this specific case we can name Koptieve, settlement from which the Ukrainians retreated in terrible order in mid-June. From there, the Russians exploited a hole that formed in Razine behind the Kazenyi Torets river, and continued without much resistance all the way until the doors of Rodynske, where at the time of writing they have been effectively stopped.
An analysis of the current tactical situation in the city and on its flanks, especially focusing on the Rodynske flank (right), and what has been prepared in all these months behind the city.
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Early May 2025, the Russians prepare the all-or nothing push on Pokrovsk's right flank, concentrating enormous amounts of infantry and equipment.
A motorcycle assault breaks through to Novoolenivka on May 1st, and the flower blooms. The Russians immediately commit their reserves and attack absolutely everything. Every single field, every single settlement.
Malynivka and Yablunivka are entered a week later, Nova Poltavka falls 2 weeks after Novoolenivka, opening the way to Poltavka, and Novoekonomichne, which a month ago was in the rear, is now threatened from 2 directions.
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But the actual breakthrough happens in mid June, when Koptieve, and most importantly, the trenches in front and around it, are lost.
The Russians sense a weak spot, and again commit everything they have in the sector.
At that time, they were able to significantly lengthen the front with their spearhead, sending the Ukrainians into a catastrophic infantry shortage, but most critically, complete disorganization in the drone operators' ranks. My "prayers", unfortunately, were not listened to (x.com/Playfra0/statu…).