Russian Forces Push Towards Key Strategic City Pokrovsk in Eastern Ukraine: Thousands of Cuts Tactic Could Challenge Kyiv’s Defenses

In the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, small groups of Russian troops have breached defensive lines, according to local officials and monitoring organizations. This development complicates Kyiv’s situation as Russia seeks to encircle the strategic city of Pokrovsk.

Russian forces are advancing towards Dobropillia, a town approximately 20 kilometers north of Pokrovsk, as reported by the Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState on Tuesday. The city has been under Kremlin scrutiny for months.

Ukrainian authorities acknowledge that their defenses near Dobropillia have been compromised by Russian troops, but they emphasize that this involves minimal troop numbers and does not indicate control of territory by Russia.

Despite Russia’s efforts to advance towards Pokrovsk for over a year, the recent push could represent a last-minute attempt to seize as much territory as possible before the scheduled meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday.

In this encounter, Putin may strive to portray Russia’s progress in Donetsk as inevitable. Although details regarding Putin’s reported conditions for a ceasefire in Ukraine are ambiguous, most versions suggest that the Russian president will demand Ukrainian forces retreat from all areas of the Donetsk region they still occupy.

However, Ukrainian officials have warned that their hold on the front lines is weakening, following months of incremental Russian gains, fueled by Moscow’s superior manpower.

Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, a former chief of staff of Ukraine’s elite Azov Brigade, issued a public warning to President Volodymyr Zelensky about Ukraine’s deteriorating defenses. “Mr. President,” he wrote on X, “I am informing you that the situation (near Pokrovsk) is, without exaggeration, a complete mess.”

“The front line is virtually non-existent,” Krotevych stated.

A commander near Pokrovsk, speaking anonymously, told CNN that Ukraine’s defenses in the area mainly consist of two-man positions resupplied by drones alone. Rather than traditional trench warfare with opposing lines facing each other, the battlefield now consists of a series of mostly concealed, isolated, and small outposts, where infantry attempt to maintain ground without being detected by enemy drones.

This innovative strategy plays into Russia’s advantage of larger forces, enabling them to send small groups forward, prepared to lose troops if they encounter resistance or to reinforce successes.

“The enemy is trying to use the ‘thousand cuts’ tactic,” said Valentin Manko, commander of Ukraine’s Assault Forces. “Three small groups of several men each have infiltrated our positions (near Dobropillia). They slipped through and caused some damage,” he added. “Some of them were eliminated, some were captured.”

Manko stated that Ukrainian officers are working to search the entire area, which could take several days.

The regional command of Ukraine’s ground forces in Donetsk claims that many of the groups that infiltrate Ukraine’s defenses are soon neutralized. “The enemy personnel who infiltrate between the positions of (our) units face certain death,” it stated.

Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s ground forces in the neighboring Dnipro region, asserted that these infiltrations do not imply control of territory by Russia. “What actually happened is that a small Russian group – perhaps five to 10 people – managed to slip through,” he said, emphasizing that battlefield control maps, like those produced by DeepState, can depict this as a substantial territorial gain for Russia.

“It doesn’t mean they control the entire route they moved through. They simply made their way in and attempted to hide somewhere,” Tregubov explained.

While Kyiv fears that Russia will employ these small groups en masse, consolidating gains behind Ukraine’s fragmented defenses even if many groups are neutralized.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, stated on Tuesday that it is “premature” to declare Russian advances near Dobropillia an “operational-level breakthrough.” However, it added that Russian forces may aim to develop their tactical gains into an operational-level breakthrough in the coming days.

It noted that this strategy resembles Russia’s penetration of Ukraine’s defenses around Avdiivka, another city further east in Donetsk, which Russia captured in April 2024.

“The next few days in the Pokrovsk area of operations will likely be critical for Ukraine’s ability to prevent accelerated Russian gains north and northwest of Pokrovsk,” ISW assessed.

Bohdan Miroshnikov, a Ukrainian military blogger, offered a more pessimistic outlook, stating that the situation in the area “is gradually approaching the point where Pokrovsk… can no longer be saved.”

“For now, that point has not yet been reached. The critical moment has not yet come. But unfortunately, everything is heading in that direction as of now,” he wrote on Telegram.