Military Watch:

Ukrainain Commander Warns Forces Are Facing ‘Catastrophe’ in Donbas: Two Encirclements Imminent

Eastern Europe and Central Asia , Ground , Battlefield

Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff

August-13th-2025

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Ukrainian Servicemen with RPG in Donetsk

Former chief of staff of the Ukrainian Army’s elite Azov Brigade Lieutenant Colonel Bogdan Krotevich has claimed that Ukrainain forces in the disputed Donbas regions are facing an increasingly catastrophic situation, with Russian units poised to achieve two major encirclements. “I honestly don’t know what exactly you are being told, but I can tell you: the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka line is, without exaggeration, a complete f**k up. And this f**k up has been growing for a long time, getting messier every day,” he stated in an open letter to President Volodymyr Zelensky on August 11. Pokrovsk has been surrounded by Russian forces, while Konstantinovka is facing semi-encirclement, he added, sharing a map which he claimed showed the situation in the area, which corroborated media reports of a major Russian breakthrough to the north of Pokrovsk. 

Russian Thermobaric Bombardment in the Donbas and TOS-1A Rocket Launcher

Elaborating on the primary issues facing Ukrainain frontline units, Krotevich observed: “The systemic problem began with the thinning out of reserves, widespread fragmentation of units along the entire front line, reports about a ‘taken village’ touted as a victory despite failures in entire operational directions.” He added that parts of the military leadership had at times how a “complete lack of a strategic and even operational vision of the theatre of operations.” Pressure on Ukrainain forces has mounted following the defeat of an incursion into the Russian Kursk region, which from August 2024 saw Ukrainian Army and supporting foreign units take tremendous casualties, including the loss of much of its most capable equipment. The retaking of Kursk with significant assistance from North Korean personnel has allowed the Russian Army to reallocate units to other areas of the frontlines. 

Ukrainain Armour in Sumy

Reports have reflected increasingly poorly on the state of Ukrainian positions on the frontlines, with a report by the Wall Street Journal in late June noting: “after a chaotic and costly retreat from Kursk, they found outdated trenches, with no overhead cover from drones. The soldiers are now digging their own positions under drone fire in some cases.” The Journal’s war correspondents have more recently slammed the overly rigid command of the Ukrainian Army, claiming this has resulted in major losses. Ukrainian personnel have been highly critical of the state of their defences, noting that fortifications were not well suited to battlefields in which drone warfare dominated, and that planners neglected to use mines when there had been opportunities to do so to block Russian advances. 

Disabled Ukrainian Army M1A1 Abrams Tank Near Volchye, Pokrovsk

Ukrainain officers and journalists on the frontlines have from 2023 in particular stressed the unsustainability of the situation on the frontlines, noting that casualty rates for conscript units reaching 80-90 percent, which has fuelled a major personnel crisis. Foreign servicemen and contractors, such as the Polish Foreign Legion and Colombian and Brazilian mercenary units, have played growing roles to help compensate for this. The discrepancy in equipment, however, has continued to grow, as Ukraine’s supporters in the Western world have increasingly depleted their inventories, while Russia has benefitted tremendously both from very large scale supplies from North Korea, and from significant increases in the output of its own defence sector.