“Ukraine will never submit to the occupiers” kyiv swears again and again, on the thousandth day of the invasion of Vladimir Putin’s armed forces on its territory. However, the country sees the front line sinking into its lands, eating away village by village in the Eastern Oblast, from the North to the South. In a desire to maintain the determination of his exhausted troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself visited some of the hot spots on the front on Monday, November 18, in Pokrovsk (East) and Koupiansk (North). “We must remain strong. We cannot collapse now,” he insisted in front of the Ukrainian Parliament on Tuesday, the day after the long-awaited green light from the United States, which now authorizes Ukraine to strike Russian territory. with American long-range missiles.
Excited by the “liberation” of numerous villages in the Oblast in recent weeks, Moscow responds today through the voice of its spokesperson Dmitri Peskov that “the military operation will continue” until the achievement of “the objectives set “. That is to say until a Ukrainian surrender, and the cession of the territories currently occupied, and the promise that kyiv will not join NATO. The Kremlin assures that its army will defeat the forces of kyiv, in difficulty in several sectors of the front against Russian troops who have been advancing for months.
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- In the East, many villages in Donetsk are taken
October marked the most prolific month for Moscow, whose troops advanced by 478 km², mainly in Donetsk, its largest territorial gain in a month since March 2022 and the first weeks of the war, according to an analysis of the AFP based on data from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Two thirds of these Russian advances, or 324 km2, were made in the Donetsk region, in the east of the country, an area that President Vladimir Putin considers his “priority”.
This Tuesday, on the thousandth day of its assault on Ukraine, Russia claimed the capture of a new village in Donetsk called Novosselydivka. This is one of the sectors of the front where its troops are advancing against a Ukrainian army which has been retreating for several months.
- The town of Kourakhové caught in a vice
Novosselydivka is located less than 10 kilometers north of Kurakhové, a city which had around 18,000 inhabitants before the conflict, and which is notably home to a large deposit of lithium, a rare mineral, nearby. The Russian army continues to advance in this area, and is currently at the gates of the suburbs of Kurakhové, which is also adjacent to an artificial lake, a huge water reservoir.
About twenty kilometers south of Kurakhové, the progress of Moscow’s troops is also accelerating, placing the city in a stranglehold. At the end of October, the Russian army claimed the capture of the village of Yasna Polyana. The important city of Vougledar, about twenty kilometers further south, had already fallen into the hands of the Russian army at the beginning of October.
- Pokrovsk logistics hub threatened?
A handful of kilometers further north, the industrial city of Pokrovsk, whose important rail and road junction is used as a logistics platform for Ukrainian troops, is also threatened with conquest. It is located just below Chassiv Iar, a town located on a natural defense line formed by a canal, seized by Russian troops at the end of October. Positioned high up, this city has a strategic overhang over other cities important for the logistics of the Ukrainian forces, such as Pokrovsk, but also Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, other important logistical bases of the Ukrainian army where many inhabitants are still found.
- In the South, pressure increases on Zaporizhia
The Russians hope, by seizing Pokrovsk, to also increase pressure on the southern front, towards Zaporizhia, where strikes are already increasing. “If we take this city, we will clear the entire southern axis of the Donetsk region and put pressure on the enemy grouping in Zaporizhia,” a representative of the Russian press agency Ria Novosti told the Russian news agency Ria Novosti in mid-October. Russian occupation in Donetsk.
Zaporizhia is now hit by powerful aerial bombs guided by the Russians, the same ones that ravaged Vougledar. On November 11, at least six people were killed and around twenty others injured in Russian attacks on Zaporizhia and its neighbor Mykolaiv. This city, located a little more than 50 km from the Dnieper River, which constitutes the front line between the Ukrainian and Russian armies in this area, had until now been relatively spared from attacks by Moscow forces since the recapture by kyiv from the large neighboring city of Kherson in November 2022.
- In the north, repeated bombings in the Kursk border region
On the night of Monday to Tuesday, a Russian strike fell on the dormitory of an educational establishment in northeastern Ukraine, killing seven people including a child. Other victims could be trapped under the rubble.
The Sumy region, bordering Kursk in Russia, where Ukrainian forces occupy part of the territory after an offensive in August, has since been the scene of deadly bombings. Two days earlier, a missile strike had already killed eight people, including a child in Sumy.
- The Russian army at the gates of Kupiansk
The Russian army has also carried out assaults on the gates of Kupiansk, 40 kilometers from the Russian border, in recent days, even penetrating briefly, according to local Ukrainian authorities. This town, where more than 25,000 inhabitants lived before the conflict, was occupied by the Russian army between the end of February 2022 and the beginning of September of the same year, when the Ukrainian forces, thanks to a successful counterattack, had regained control of the area. She has since been a few kilometers from the front line.