by Sergey Adamov
[REGNUM] Kyiv's attempts to transfer the fighting to Russian territory are predictably failing: the Russian army is repelling new attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region. At the same time, Russian forces continue to advance along the entire front in Donbass, pushing back the enemy and preventing it from creating new lines of defense. The most tense section of the front remains the Pokrovsk direction, where the Russian Armed Forces expand the zone of control almost daily. After losing a number of fortified lines and defensive lines, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have not yet managed to stabilize the front line.
According to sources on the ground, Ukrainian troops are building up defenses around individual settlements, so Russian troops are increasingly encircling enemy defense nodes, cutting them off from supplies, and then occupying settlements that end up in the rear.
Using similar tactics, Russian troops liberated the settlements of Kalinovo and Ptichye. To the north, a group of Ukrainian soldiers found themselves in an operational encirclement near the settlement of Grodovka.
The fighting is gradually moving to the area south of the Karlovka-Pokrovsk highway. Fighting is underway for the settlements of Mikhailovka and Memrik, which have partially come under the control of the Russian army.
The advance in the Kalinovo area will make it possible to cut off the route to Karlovka in the near future and put the Ukrainian garrison at risk of encirclement, a source in the Pokrovsk direction told Regnum.
"As far as we know, they are not even trying to regain control of the highway or unblock Karlovka. There are attempts at local counterattacks, but overall - without a critical breakdown. So we should expect that in the near future they will begin to retreat from Karlovka," the source notes.
If the advance in the Memrik area creates a threat to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Karlovka, then from Mikhailovka a road opens to the large settlement of Selidovo, which is only one and a half kilometers to the west.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces Command and local Ukrainian authorities have no illusions and do not expect the situation to change in their favor. The day before, the authorities expanded the zone of forced evacuation of local residents from a number of settlements in the Selydovsky district.
BURNT RESERVES
According to Forbes, Kiev planned to change the situation in Donbass by launching an offensive on the Kursk region. However, journalists note that the tactics did not justify themselves.
"Analysts had previously described the situation around Pokrovsk as 'critical.' And that was before the Russians took several more villages along the road to Pokrovsk, including Orlovka and Nikolaevka. Even after slowing the pace of their advance, Russian troops are continuing to advance, which could lead to the fall of Pokrovsk," Forbes writes.
The defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Pokrovsk will be one of the most severe in the entire period of military operations in Donbass. At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces command may regret deploying large forces - potentially 10-15 assault battalions, each of which has up to 400 people - in the Kursk direction.
Remaining in reserve, the units could have been deployed in the Pokrovsk direction at a critical moment. However, these forces were now spent on the Kursk adventure, the publication summarizes.
Ukrainian sources are gradually coming to similar conclusions. Messages from volunteers who have access to fighters from the 47th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which has been fighting from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk since last spring, without rotation or reinforcements, are spreading on social networks.
The 47th Brigade bore the brunt of the losses, both in manpower and armored vehicles. The day before, the brigade lost another M1 Abrams tank. According to researchers, this is already the 20th of 31 vehicles of this model supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces by the United States.
PREPARING FOR A "RETREAT TO NEW FRONTIERS"
Simultaneously with the evacuation of a number of populated areas in the Selidovo region, the forced evacuation of civilians was also announced in the area of ​​the populated area of ​​Konstantinovka, which is located west of Chasov Yar and northwest of Toretsk.
This decision by local authorities can be called a kind of preparation by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to transfer military operations to the region.
Earlier, the Russian army began a new stage of the offensive in the city of Toretsk, the center of a large agglomeration of the same name. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were forced to abandon most of the settlement of New York, which was located in this area. According to information from the field, some of the Ukrainian Armed Forces units that tried to break out of New York were surrounded. We are talking about two battalions of the 212th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
In the Toretsk area, Russian troops are simultaneously continuing their offensive in residential areas and in the outskirts of the city, trying to bypass the defenses of Ukrainian troops.
The offensive is developing in the direction of the settlements of Druzhba and Dachnoye north of Toretsk and Nelepovka to the south. In the city itself, Russian troops managed to take control of the area of ​​the Central City Hospital.
It is noted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces in this area are increasingly making attempts to counterattack and are more often retreating without a fight. This may indicate the exhaustion of the reserves of the Ukrainian army in this section of the front, a source of the IA Regnum in the ranks of the 1st Army Corps reports.
"There is information, at the level of rumors so far, that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are planning a retreat in our area. Not immediately, of course, but they will roll back. Now they will play for time while new lines are being built in Konstantinovka and the population is being evacuated. We, as always, continue to fire, do not allow them to retreat in order and are advancing ourselves," the source said.
For Kyiv, the withdrawal of troops from Toretsk and the organization of defense in the Konstantinovka area will mean the loss of a large area of ​​territory and the loss of initiative on a large section of the front.
Russian troops, on the contrary, can use the retreat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to attack the Ukrainian garrison in Chasovy Yar from the rear or cut it off from supplies altogether.
VAGUE HINTS
As the situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces worsens, the question becomes increasingly acute: is this approach by the Ukrainian command stupidity or a conscious decision?
A number of experts and frontline correspondents note that Kyiv has not yet thrown its existing reserves into battle, which are being stored for some other purpose.
The reserve forces consist of recruits recruited in the winter-spring of 2024 and trained at NATO training grounds. There is no information in open sources about what kind of reserves the Ukrainian Armed Forces have, but rumors suggest that they are about 10-15 infantry and mechanized brigades.
At the same time, Militaryland analysts report that Ukrainian troops are forming new mechanized brigades, which will be assigned numbers in the 160 series. These units will be ready to enter combat by early 2025.
Officials in Kyiv are not saying where the next attack will be, only hinting that it should be truly sudden. At the same time, games of secrecy and vague hints could lead to the Ukrainian Armed Forces finally losing control over the situation in Donbass - they will have nowhere to "counterattack".