Battlefield Picture Worsening for Ukraine as Trump Pushes Peace Plan

KYIV, Ukraine — It was a clear attempt to project Russian power.

Hours before meeting US officials in Moscow this past week about their plan to end the war, President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia’s forces had seized the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after a months long fight.

The reality was murkier. Slivers of the city were still contested, according to battlefield maps and the Ukrainian military. But Putin’s claim, even if premature, reflected a trend shaping his unbending approach to negotiations: Russian forces are on the march.

“The Russians do have the upper hand,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group. Ukraine is not yet at the point where it must capitulate, he said, but it “is looking weak enough that the Russians think that they can impose demands.”

Putin has ordered the Russian military to prepare for winter combat, signalling after the talks with US officials that he is not budging from his hard-line demands.

President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has since held a series of discussions in Miami with Ukraine’s delegation that both sides called “constructive.”

As these statements were being released, Russia unleashed more than 650 drones and 51 missiles on towns and cities across Ukraine in an assault that began overnight Friday and stretched through Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials said.

On Saturday evening, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wrote on social media that he had “just had a long and substantive phone call” with Mr Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and a businessperson who does some international diplomacy for Mr Trump, during which they “agreed on the next steps and formats for talks with the United States.”

In recent weeks, Russian forces have advanced on several fronts. They are on the brink of capturing Pokrovsk, a onetime logistics hub in the eastern region of Donetsk, and have nearly encircled its neighbour, Myrnohrad.

They are moving quicker in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. They are pressing closer to the northeastern city of Kupiansk, and they are making gains around the eastern city of Siversk, according to battlefield maps, analysts and soldiers.

The advances have been slow and costly, in both lives and equipment. Ukrainian officials and analysts say Putin could still be years away from achieving his territorial goals.

Chief among them is capturing the rest of the Donetsk region, which would give Russia all of the broader eastern Ukrainian area known as the Donbas.

But Russia’s pace is quickening, and incremental moves have started to add up. Moscow’s forces captured 505 square kilometres (nearly 200 square miles) of territory in November, up from 267 square kilometres (about 100 square miles) in October, according to the battlefield map maintained by DeepState, a Ukrainian group with ties to the military.

“The future looks really, really grim for Ukraine,” Mr Kastehelmi said. “I don’t see a clear path out.”

For now, Ukraine appears to have enough resources to keep the front line from collapsing. But it is bending. Putin has suggested that Ukraine, facing manpower shortages and uncertainty about Western aid, should concede to his demands before the war gets even worse.

The Russian leader, in an interview with an Indian news outlet that was published Thursday, said Russia would take additional territory in Donetsk by whatever means necessary.

The Kremlin’s summer offensive, which was aimed at capturing all of Donetsk, produced limited gains. But starting in the fall, the tide there started to turn in Russia’s favour.

After months of bombarding Pokrovsk with artillery, drones and glide bombs, Russian forces punched through a string of villages and settlements to fight their way into the city.

“Things started to fall apart a bit on our side” starting in September, said Ihor, a Ukrainian drone pilot in the area who gave only his first name, according to military protocol. “The line just began collapsing from exhaustion.”

Russian forces are sending fixed-wing Molniya drones and waves of mini kamikaze drones that carry explosives, he said, adding that Ukraine had nothing comparable in mass production.

The current push for a peace plan is “all bluff,” he said, adding that as long as the Russians have “the ability to press us, they will keep pressing.”

At the same time, Russian forces have taken aim at other critical cities in Donetsk, including Kostiantynivka and Lyman.

Oleh Voitsekhovskyi, a Ukrainian captain whose unit is near Lyman, said Russian forces were attacking “all the time” and “along all directions.”

Drone strikes, shelling — it never stops, he said. “In the last two months,” he added, “you can feel an increase in the intensity of hostilities.”

Russian forces move in small groups, he said, as Ukrainian drones keep watch overhead. Heavy fog has made it harder for the drones to fend off the Russians.

Russia’s push toward Kostiantynivka, though, has so far failed to yield much in the way of territorial gains, the DeepState map shows. The same can be said for Lyman.

That has put more emphasis and urgency on Pokrovsk.

A thick fog descends there every day, accompanying “the smell of burned coal and the smell of gunpowder that has a hint of manganese, like at a firing range,” said Maksym Bakulin, who is with the 14th Operational Brigade of the National Guard.

While the city was “alive” a year ago, he added, Pokrovsk’s once bustling streets now have “civilian bodies and military bodies mixed together, with no possibility to retrieve them.”

Russian forces see Pokrovsk as a stepping stone toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, two heavily fortified cities in Donetsk that Ukraine still controls.stepping stone

Some analysts have questioned Ukraine’s decision to keep fighting in Pokrovsk and incur heavy losses there.

Analysts and some Ukrainian soldiers have said Kyiv may be trying to hold on to avoid feeding Russia’s narrative of inevitable victory as peace talks heat up. Staying in Pokrovsk could also increase Russian forces’ losses.

As Ukraine concentrated so many resources on that battle, analysts say, Russian forces spotted an opportunity elsewhere on the 75-mile-long front line, in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.

Russian forces made a relatively quick march there in recent weeks, seizing about 75 square miles around the city of Huliaipole in November, nearly 40 per cent of Moscow’s total territorial gains last month, according to DeepState.

Ukraine has sent some reserves to the area, which has helped slow the advance, “but still, the pace there is relatively alarming,” said Kastehelmi, the analyst.

The onset of winter could reduce the pace of Russia’s advances along the broader front, and Ukrainian movements. The preponderance of drones is slowing things down even further, forcing a shift away from infantry-heavy attacks.

Because of the drones, the front line is less of a line and more of a patch of land, what soldiers call a “kill zone,” up to 15 miles wide in places.

But Russia has a seemingly endless spigot of soldiers and a willingness to absorb heavy losses in a style of warfare that has been likened to a meat grinder.

“Russia has committed itself to a war of attrition, and they are currently trying to militarily break Ukraine, slowly,” Mr Kastehelmi said.

As the 18-month battle for Pokrovsk seemingly enters its final stages, fears have risen for the neighbouring city of Myrnohrad.

Russia is storming Ukrainian positions there daily, said Oleh, a sergeant platoon commander in the area who also would give only his first name per military protocol. Drones have turned the roads in and out into death traps.

“Neither by day nor by night do they give us peace,” Oleh said.

He marveled at Russia’s resources, including night vision, resupply aircraft and soldiers.

“If we have three people, they have 30,” he said. “How much manpower they have is just unreal.

“But,” he added, “they also did not expect that we would fight for so long.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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