Days before the summit between the leaders of Russia and the U.S. in Alaska, Moscow's forces breached Ukrainian lines in a series of infiltrations in the country's industrial heartland of Donetsk. Though the advances amount to only a limited success for Russia since it still needs to consolidate its gains before achieving a true breakthrough, analysts say, it's a potentially dangerous moment for Ukraine.
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold their high-stakes discussion about the war in Ukraine in Alaska on Friday. At the same time, Ukraine will be watching from the outside along with with European allies, hoping Mr. Trump is protecting their interests.
Putin will likely try to persuade Mr. Trump to pressure Ukraine by arguing the war is going badly for Kyiv, said Mykola Bieleskov, a senior analyst at CBA Initiatives Center.
"The key risk for Ukraine is that the Kremlin will try to turn certain local gains on the battlefield into strategic victories at the negotiating table," he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30% of the Donetsk region that Kyiv still controls as part of a ceasefire deal, a proposal the Ukrainian leader categorically rejected.
After years of fighting, Russia still does not fully control all of the Donetsk region, which it illegally annexed in 2022, along with the Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Attention has been focused on Pokrovsk - a key highway and rail junction that once was home to about 60,000 and now is partially encircled - but Russian forces have been probing for weaknesses north of the city, according to battlefield analysis site DeepState. The forces found a gap east of the coal-mining town of Dobropillia and advanced about 6 miles.
Zelenskyy noted its clear significance to the summit: "To create a certain information backdrop ahead of Putin's meeting with Trump, especially in the American information space, suggesting that Russia is moving forward and Ukraine is losing ground."
Russia trying to expand its gains
Small groups of Russian troops are slipping past the first defensive line, hiding and trying to build up their forces, said Dmytro Trehubov, spokesman for Ukraine's "Dnipro" operational-strategic group.
Ukraine's military has been repelling these attempts, he said, although DeepState said the situation has not been stabilized.
Analysts described the breach near Dobropillia as a localized crisis that could escalate if the Russians are not neutralized and their main forces can widen the gap.
The breach of the defensive line has seemed inevitable for months, according to a drone pilot in the area, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly. Moscow's forces have been exploiting the lack of Ukrainian infantry, a problem tied not only to the country's stalled mobilization but also to poor management, the pilot said.
"We pay with territory and lives to fix mistakes - and we can keep fixing mistakes only as long as we have even a scrap of land left," the pilot said.
Ukrainian forces have tried to plug the gaps by extensive use of first-person-view drones - remotely piloted devices loaded with explosives that enable operators to see targets before striking.
These FPVs have turned areas up to about 12 miles from the front into deadly zones on both sides of the line. But because the Russians attack with small groups, it's hard to counter with drones alone.
"We can't launch 100 FPVs at once," the pilot said, noting the drone operators would interfere with each other.
With tactics and technology roughly equal on both sides, the Russians' superior manpower works to their advantage, said Bielieskov, the Kyiv-based analyst.
"They have no regard for human life. Very often, most of those they send are on a one-way mission," he said.
Stopping the infiltrations and assaults by armored vehicles requires different defenses and leadership structures - changes that have yet to appear on Ukraine's side, he said.
Ukraine seeking to stem the recent tide
Ukraine's military said Thursday additional troops have been moved to affected areas, with battle-hardened forces like the Azov brigade being deployed to the sector. However, the Deepstate map doesn't show any changes in favor of the Ukrainian army.
Michael Kofman, a military analyst for the Carnegie Endowment, said in a post on X that it was too early to assess if the front line was collapsing,
Russia is focused on expanding the breach of the front line into a corridor to support its ground forces, Bieleskov said. The strategy avoids direct assaults on heavily fortified urban centers, instead pushing through open terrain where Ukraine's troop shortages and large settlements make defense harder.
If successful, such a move could bypass Russia's need to storm Kostiantynivka - once a city of over 67,000 people and now significantly ruined and on the verge of falling. That would complicate defending the region's last big cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka, posing a serious challenge for Ukraine's military.
Cmdr. Serhii Filimonov of the "Da Vinci Wolves" battalion of the 59th brigade warned that Kostiantynivka could fall without a fight if Russia severs supply routes.
With few major roads, maintaining logistics for the large number of Ukrainian forces in the area would become "extremely difficult," Filimonov said.
Turning to the summit, Filimonov decried what he described as ongoing Russian killings and atrocities. "And then the civilized world comes to them and says, 'Fine, let's make a deal.' That's not how it should be done," he said.
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