Ryssland startar våroffensiv. (Mars 2026)

Fighting is taking place on outskirts of Kostiantynivka. Russia is actively infiltrating city, – DeepState Source: https://censor.net/en/n4020306

"It is no longer accurate to simply say that they are storming the city and fighting on the outskirts, as there is active infiltration into the city and our troops are forced to carry out constant mop-up operations against the enemy, who are hiding in houses, cellars, ruins and so on. After capturing Illinivka, which the Russians are using to infiltrate the city, the enemy began expanding its zone of control, advancing westwards to widen the encirclement around Kostiantynivka," analysts noted. Source: https://censor.net/en/n4020306

Ukrainian intelligence units will not help: Analyst warns that once Russia breaks into Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, reinforcing them only delays inevitable

Russia is 12 to 13 km away
Kovalenko laid out how close Russian forces have come. Their forward positions are 12-13 kilometers from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. He warned that if Russia's pace does not slow, the first infiltrations into both cities could come by December 2026.

The advance is measured in ground lost. The problem on the eastern flank runs about 30 kilometers, where Russia's 3rd Combined Arms Army operates.

Russians Are Expanding the “Pocket” Around Kostiantynivka, While Chasiv Yar Faces the Greatest Danger: DeepState Details

The occupiers are also putting pressure in the direction of the cities of Raihorodok and Mykolaivka, with the aim of eventually launching an offensive on Sloviansk itself. Russian forces have already begun infiltrating Mykolaivka. Analysts describe this as a “warning sign” and an indication that the enemy is “probing for weak spots.” Ukrainian defenders are detecting and destroying Russian forces in the settlement.

Russians infiltrate last stronghold before Sloviansk, as North Korea supplies devastating new missiles (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,639)

The battle for the last town before Sloviansk has begun. It is Mykolaivka.

Kostiantynivka står fortfarande. Ryssen har utökat infiltrationen av staden, och fått Ukraina ännu mer bak på hälen.

Fler och fler bosättningar erövras och omvänds till operativa utposter. Det är nu inget mellan ryssen och de två andra befästningsstäderna Kramatorsk och Sloviansk.

Ett liknande öde som Pokrovsk och Kostiantynivka fruktas städerna om inte förstärkning når dem innan infiltrationerna tar fäste.

Putin utlovade att han skulle erövrat Kostiantynivka i Augusti, det kanske är en definitionsfråga men inte håller han grepp om stateden ännu.

Han skulle även plocka resten av Donetsk då efter Kostiantynivkas fall så kan de inte uppehålla ett starkt försvar från de två andra städerna i bältet.

Rapporteringarna menar på att inga seriösa inskränkningar på dessa städer kommer kunna aktualiseras förens i december.

Trots de svåra motgångarna tycks Ukraina lyckats med att sinka in offensiven rejält.

Men ödet tycks inte ändras sig, endast fördröjas.

The Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk sectors remain the hottest spots

In addition, the Russian army deployed 11,357 kamikaze drones and carried out 3,138 shelling attacks on Ukrainian positions and populated areas. Sixty of these attacks were conducted using multiple-launch rocket systems. Settlements in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions came under artillery fire. Specifically, the Russians shelled Neskuchne, Korenok, Potapivka, Mala Korchakivka, Volfyne, Atynske, Sopych, Bachivsk, and Tovstodubove in the Sumy region, as well as Liskyvshchyna in the Chernihiv region.

At the same time, Ukrainian air forces, missile forces, and artillery struck Russian troops. According to the General Staff, 14 areas where personnel were concentrated, seven artillery systems, six drone control centers, and three other important targets were struck.

Russia is slowly grinding through the Donbas as Ukraine braces for a brutal fight over its last strongholds

The Donbas is comprised of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Russia has captured almost all of Luhansk, while Ukraine controls just under one-fifth of the Donetsk region, an area of roughly 5,000 square kilometers, about five times the size of Berlin.

The question is increasingly not whether Putin's army will seize the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in Donbas, but when.

Ukraine reinforces Donetsk as it seeks to disrupt Russia’s weapons flow

Ukraine has reinforced the defence of its eastern Donetsk region as Russia mounted renewed efforts to seize Sloviansk, a key part of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” of cities that include Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka.

At the same time, Britain and France made a crucial decision to transfer Storm Shadow cruise missile technology to Kyiv, as Ukraine shifts its air defence strategy to destroying Russia’s means of ballistic missile production and launch, rather than intercepting the missiles individually.

Glide bomb then infiltrate. This is Russia’s new way of war.

On Monday, a small team of Russian infiltrators reportedly slipped 10 km behind the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian troops just north of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Sneaking into the town of Druzhkivka, 10 km north of Kostiantynivka along the H20 highway, the Russians reportedly ambushed, captured, and executed a group of three or four unarmed Ukrainian drone operators.

Kriget i Donetsk fortsätter samma bana.

Ryssen bombar, infiltrerar sig djupare. Ukrainarna letar nya innovativa operationer för att stoppa ryskt artelleri/drönare/cruisers. (Vad är samlingsnamnet?) Denna gång vill de förgöra själva produktionen då att att finna och förgöra avfyrarna innan de fyra av var fruktlöst.

Förstärkning har sänts.

Ukrainian positions in Donetsk Oblast to be reinforced by two restructured military groupings – Zelenskyy

Ytterligare en ny utmaning som Ukraina ställs inför: Inte nog med ingenjörer.

Shortage of engineers becomes a bottleneck for Ukraine’s defence tech

The labour shortage is emerging as one of the biggest bottlenecks to expanding Ukrainian weapons production and accelerating innovation, industry insiders say.

“The market is experiencing something akin to internal cannibalism: we keep reaching out to the same people over and over and using every tool” to recruit them, said Marta Khrypiak, defence tech lead at the Lobby X recruitment agency.

Det är nog inte så många som är sugna på att arbetsinvandra till Ukraina just nu...

Jag har tidigar skrivit om att Ryssland trappat upp deras produktion och satt igång en ny mobilisering. Läget är fortsätt svårt för Ukraina.

Utöver det är situationen över den sparkade försvarsministern fortsatt het.

Ukraine is sending its winning brigades to where the fighting is worst. The 46th just turned up outside Kramatorsk


Zooming out, the reshuffle around Kostiantynivka runs alongside a wider effort to redistribute Ukrainian troops along the 1,200-km gray zone threading through southern, eastern, and northern Ukraine. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi took over as commander-in-chief on 22 July, arriving with a mandate to unwind the Soviet-inherited command model Ukraine has fought this war with, and a reputation for favoring decentralized command. The 46th began moving before he did, in early July, according to Unit Observer, so this redeployment is not his. But the 33rd Assault Regiment was partially reassigned to Biletskyi's corps after the handover.

The best-case scenario is that the redeployment helps stabilize the front 16 km south of Kramatorsk, delaying the Russian siege of that city and Sloviansk to the north. In the worst case, the 46th Airmobile Brigade and its thousands of troops are too few and too late to make much of a difference as the Center Group of Forces and its tens of thousands of troops grind through Ukrainian defenses on their slow march toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Civilians told to flee Ukraine's fortress cities as Russia bids to control Donbas

The Russian army already controls almost all of Luhansk region, and is now in control of almost 80% of Donetsk region too, where all three fortress cities lie.

For the past few months, the territory near Kramatorsk and Slovyansk has been the main focus of Russian ground assaults. Capturing them would potentially make it much easier for Russia to advance to the west.

Map from September 2025 showing territorial control of eastern Ukraine and the fortress belt cities a year ago
The two cities are now facing intense strikes from drones and bombs.

Many civilians have already left, and key streets there are now covered with anti-drone nets, says Viktor Makurin, a volunteer from London.

"There are often [remote-controlled] FPV drones in the air, you can hear them through the window. Driving around the city is lethally dangerous. There are drones lying in ambush on the roads, too," he told the BBC.

"You can always hear explosions in the background, plus there are mobile groups firing at drones."

Reuters A man crosses a street covered with an anti-drone net, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the frontline city of KramatorskReuters
Many of Kramatorsk's key streets are now covered with anti-drone netting
Over the summer, the number of civilians wounded by Russian attacks on the two cities increased from 70 in June to 212 in August, say Ukrainian police.

Russia Sets Eye on Zaporizhzhia's Orikhiv With 150,000-Troop Formations

Serhiy Skibchik, the press officer of Ukraine’s 65th separate mechanized brigade “Velyky Lug,” noted the formations on television, calling the situation difficult but under control, according to state media Ukrinform on Thursday.

“The only thing that has changed is the hypertrophied kill zone, it has grown significantly, and it affects our logistics,” he said.

Skibchik said Russia would have to amass major forces to take the city before noting the newly spotted formations nearby.

According to Ukrinform, Skibchik said 120 assault groups are in neighboring areas, including Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army, particularly the 19th and 42nd motorized rifle divisions.

He said nearby Russian troops total around 150,000 – which is on par with the entirety of Russia’s initial invasion force across Ukraine in 2022.

But Skibchik said he’s confident that the formations are “not enough to claim success.”

“It must be said that these groups consist of assault troops trained from the 98th Airborne Division and the 7th, 11th, and 104th Airborne Assault Brigades,” he continued.

Fortsatt extremt tunt med konkret information.

Läget upplevs av mig som en väldigt långsam frammarsch av ryssland. Dock långt långsammare än utlovat av Putin, men framåt ändå.

Ukrainas strategi verkar vara att blöda Ryssland för varje meter, att Donetsk kanske inte går att rädda men striden för territoriet vinner nästa strid.

Mycket hänger på att stödet till Ukraina ökar och att de framförallt får nytt manskap. Ryssland har man att pumpa in, som jag skrivit om tidigare.

Ukraina har dock allvarliga problem med rekrytering.

Millions of Ukrainian Men Are Fleeing a Cruel Conscription System

In the early months of 2022, volunteers were lining up for the front. Not anymore. It is unclear how many are hiding, but estimates range from 2 to 6 million. This is not widely researched, and in the English-language press the dodgers issue is drowned out by pieces highlighting Ukraine’s innovation and heroism.[...]
This July, in western Ukraine’s Lviv, a hundreds-strong crowd roughed up Tetseka officers who tried to grab a man off the street. They even turned the Tetseka car upside down. The next day, Zelensky’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, called for “a just law enforcement response.” A day later police detained several participants, while a local activist veteran posted a gloomy video, in which several men and teenagers are forced to apologize and chant “glory to Tetseka.”

Ukrainas största utmaning är att få manskap och luftvärn mot Iskander klass cruisers.

Kommer Ukraina lyckas hålla befästningsbäletet till vintern? Att göra en offensiv under vintern kommer nog vis sig vara extremt svårt och kostsamt. Är Ukrainas bästa hopp att hålla ut tills dess och använda den kostnaden som hävarm i fredsförhandlingar?