Russian troop build-up threatens city seen as key to seizing Ukraine's Donbas
9 hours ago
Abdujalil Abdurasulov
In Kyiv
Reuters
Ukraine's commanders say the situation in Kostyantynivka is still under control, but accept Russian troops are active in the city
Russian troops have infiltrated the strategic city of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine and are now trying to surround it.
The entire city is now effectively in a "grey zone", no longer controlled by anyone, Ukrainian soldiers have told the BBC.
"They get into areas behind our backs and in urban conditions it's extremely difficult to push them out," says a Ukrainian drone pilot who operates in that area and prefers to remain anonymous.
Kostyantynivka is a gateway to the rest of the Donbas region.
If it falls, Russian forces would be able push towards Ukraine's last remaining strongholds in the east, the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and move closer to seizing Donbas completely, one of the Kremlin's key objectives in this war.
Ukraine's commanders say the situation in Kostyantynivka is still under control, but accept Russian troops are active in the city
Russian troops have infiltrated the strategic city of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine and are now trying to surround it.
The entire city is now effectively in a "grey zone", no longer controlled by anyone, Ukrainian soldiers have told the BBC.
"They get into areas behind our backs and in urban conditions it's extremely difficult to push them out," says a Ukrainian drone pilot who operates in that area and prefers to remain anonymous.
Kostyantynivka is a gateway to the rest of the Donbas region.
If it falls, Russian forces would be able push towards Ukraine's last remaining strongholds in the east, the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and move closer to seizing Donbas completely, one of the Kremlin's key objectives in this war.
For months Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine has stalled along the front line, and Ukrainian commanders say they have recaptured more territory this year than they have lost, disrupting Moscow's crucial supply lines between the Russian border and occupied Crimea. On Sunday, Russian-appointed authorities in Crimea suspended fuel sales to the public because of the shortages.
And Kyiv's repeated strikes on oil refineries in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities have also sought to bring the conflict to the attention of Russians far from the front line.
But in Kostyantynivka, Russian soldiers have advanced from the south and have even been spotted at the other end of the city, on the city's northern outskirts.
Moscow says its forces are rapidly advancing in the south-western part of Kostyantynivka and that they have encircled Ukrainian military units.
That is denied by Kyiv and Brig Gen Oleksandr Bakulin, commander of Ukraine's 19th Corp which is in charge of units defending the city and surrounding areas, insists "the situation remains under control" and "the enemy has no success".
However, he does acknowledge there are about 130 Russian soldiers still inside the city.
Russian defence ministry
Russia's defence ministry has posted footage showing Russian troops on the ground in Kostyantynivka
The situation on the ground may not be as critical as Moscow says, but it does appear far more serious than Ukrainian officials are ready to publicly admit, a Ukrainian officer from a unit that operates inside Kostyantynivka told the BBC.
He too has preferred to stay anonymous, but told the BBC: "We still have clean-up and assault groups inside the city, but the Russians manage to accumulate more and more soldiers there."
Every building in Kostyantynivka acts as a potential shelter for soldiers to hide, and in the summer months the trees provide extra cover.
So Russian forces have found a way to advance inside the "kill zone" where Ukrainian drones can detect any movement and instantly attack.
Russian drone pilots have also focused on destroying Ukrainian drone launch sites.
To give their infantry troops assaulting Ukrainian positions a breathing space, Russian pilots had made Ukrainian crews their priority target.
The situation on the ground may not be as critical as Moscow says, but it does appear far more serious than Ukrainian officials are ready to publicly admit, a Ukrainian officer from a unit that operates inside Kostyantynivka told the BBC.
He too has preferred to stay anonymous, but told the BBC: "We still have clean-up and assault groups inside the city, but the Russians manage to accumulate more and more soldiers there."
Every building in Kostyantynivka acts as a potential shelter for soldiers to hide, and in the summer months the trees provide extra cover.
So Russian forces have found a way to advance inside the "kill zone" where Ukrainian drones can detect any movement and instantly attack.
Russian drone pilots have also focused on destroying Ukrainian drone launch sites.
To give their infantry troops assaulting Ukrainian positions a breathing space, Russian pilots had made Ukrainian crews their priority target.
Moscow oil refinery attack brings Russia's war with Ukraine closer to home
Moscow residents complain of black rain after largest Ukrainian attack hits oil refinery
The Ukrainian drone pilot told the BBC that while his colleagues were targeting Russia's infantry, enemy crews were not: "For such tasks, they use artillery, multiple rocket launchers, military aviation."
He and his comrades have limited numbers and resources, so they are often exhausted and have struggled to expand their operations.
"Since we devote little time to [searching and targeting] enemy pilots, they can freely operate, detect our positions and we are forced to roll back. This is how the frontline moves," he explains.
The Ukrainian officer whose unit is operating in the city maintains the pace of the Russian advance is very slow: "Sometimes they move 100m [109yds] a day. Sometimes they even crawl to reach the next building."
Russian forces in Kostyantynivka have adopted a similar strategy to that used in the capture of Pokrovsk and other major cities in eastern Ukraine, advancing along the flanks to surround the city and cut off supply routes.
In recent days the Russian defence ministry has said it has seized villages to the west of the city.
Such reports have helped divert attention from Ukraine's attacks on oil refineries deep inside Russia and on supply routes to Crimea, and the major fuel shortages they have caused.
He and his comrades have limited numbers and resources, so they are often exhausted and have struggled to expand their operations.
"Since we devote little time to [searching and targeting] enemy pilots, they can freely operate, detect our positions and we are forced to roll back. This is how the frontline moves," he explains.
The Ukrainian officer whose unit is operating in the city maintains the pace of the Russian advance is very slow: "Sometimes they move 100m [109yds] a day. Sometimes they even crawl to reach the next building."
Russian forces in Kostyantynivka have adopted a similar strategy to that used in the capture of Pokrovsk and other major cities in eastern Ukraine, advancing along the flanks to surround the city and cut off supply routes.
In recent days the Russian defence ministry has said it has seized villages to the west of the city.
Such reports have helped divert attention from Ukraine's attacks on oil refineries deep inside Russia and on supply routes to Crimea, and the major fuel shortages they have caused.
Russian ministry of defence
A screengrab from a Russian video shows damaged buildings in Kostyantynivka
That appears to explain the Kremlin's decision to surround and seize Kostyantynivka as quickly as possible.
The situation has become a "major crisis", the Ukrainian drone pilot warns.
Russian drone units do not even need to rely on sophisticated unmanned systems as they are now close enough to use cheap Chinese drones that cannot fly far to conduct surveillance and identify Ukrainian drone launch sites.
Delivering supplies has become extremely difficult, with land routes constantly targeted and big logistical drones regularly intercepted.
The fall of Kostyantynivka "is a matter of time", says Ukrainian frontline monitoring project DeepState.
Once that happens, logistical operations in the area will be more complicated and even remaining in Kramatorsk will become "extremely dangerous", it reports.
Another Ukrainian soldier whose unit is fighting in the city has said they are not getting the necessary reinforcements to cover their losses, and their commanders are reluctant to report about lost positions.
If they do, then they will be ordered to retake them: "We don't have enough people to hold on to what we still control, let alone organise assaults."
"We are still fighting inside the city," the drone pilot says, "But unless we change our approach and start destroying their logistics and targeting their pilots, they will continue advancing."
That appears to explain the Kremlin's decision to surround and seize Kostyantynivka as quickly as possible.
The situation has become a "major crisis", the Ukrainian drone pilot warns.
Russian drone units do not even need to rely on sophisticated unmanned systems as they are now close enough to use cheap Chinese drones that cannot fly far to conduct surveillance and identify Ukrainian drone launch sites.
Delivering supplies has become extremely difficult, with land routes constantly targeted and big logistical drones regularly intercepted.
The fall of Kostyantynivka "is a matter of time", says Ukrainian frontline monitoring project DeepState.
Once that happens, logistical operations in the area will be more complicated and even remaining in Kramatorsk will become "extremely dangerous", it reports.
Another Ukrainian soldier whose unit is fighting in the city has said they are not getting the necessary reinforcements to cover their losses, and their commanders are reluctant to report about lost positions.
If they do, then they will be ordered to retake them: "We don't have enough people to hold on to what we still control, let alone organise assaults."
"We are still fighting inside the city," the drone pilot says, "But unless we change our approach and start destroying their logistics and targeting their pilots, they will continue advancing."
181,000 drones. Four months. Made in Taiwan. Bound for Ukraine. Beijing's UAV monopoly — the supply chain the CCP spent two decades building to coerce democracies — just hit a wall, and almost nobody outside Taipei and Kyiv has noticed.
ReplyDeleteRussia's war on Ukraine is now in its fifth year, and the lesson is reshaping the Indo-Pacific: the side that out-produces drones, out-fights. The CCP knows this. It dominates global UAV manufacturing and has tightened export controls to choke democracies it dislikes. Taiwan and Ukraine just answered.
In the first four months of 2026, Taiwan exported over 181,000 drones, nearly 20 times the volume of the same period a year earlier. Officially the shipments route through Poland and the Czech Republic. Unofficially, most are headed for the Ukrainian front line. Taipei's pitch is blunt: become the Asian hub for "non-red" UAVs and components — drones free of Chinese materials, free of CCP leverage. Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics ecosystem, the same base that produced TSMC, is now being mobilized into flight controllers, batteries, motors, and airframes for democracies under fire.
Bohdan Diorditsa, chief international alliances officer at Ukrainian drone maker Vyriy, told The Guardian Taiwan is "100% a valuable partner." Snake Island Institute analyst Artur Savchii points to lithium-ion cells and high-end electronics as the spaces where Taiwan can simply replace China. The Lviv IT Cluster, with over 300 companies and 100,000 tech professionals, has opened exploratory talks with Taiwan's external trade body on ICT, semiconductors, and defense technology.
The strategic logic stretches well beyond the trade ledger. Adm. Samuel Paparo, who commands US Pacific Command, has openly described turning the Taiwan Strait into an "unmanned hellscape" to deny Beijing a fait accompli. Hudson Institute naval analyst Bryan Clark argues drones can plug the island-chain defense gap stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Taipei's own target: 100,000 drones a month by 2030. That isn't the ceiling. It's the floor.
Taipei calls it the "drone shield." It's also something larger: the first real democratic UAV alliance, forged under fire, engineered to break the supply-chain chokehold the CCP has weaponized for years.
Watch the hands, not the headlines. The next war is being deterred in factories from Lviv to Taichung.
ACI — Aric Chen | Insights
https://x.com/aricchen/status/2068911768756158477?s=20
wakakakaka…
DeleteJust a question about 'drones free of Chinese materials, free of CCP leverage'
Know-nothing fart about drone supply chains- both material & parts.
A syiok-sendiri fart for a gullible gullie to c&p.
The panic evacuation from occupied Crimea is not some random summer traffic jam. It is the direct, predictable result of Ukraine methodically dismantling the logistics that kept the peninsula a fortress. Kerch Bridge turned into a 650-car parking lot at night tells you everything: civilians with suitcases are voting with their wheels because they no longer believe Moscow can guarantee their safety.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is exactly how imperial occupations die, not with grand tank battles on open fields but with steady, grinding erosion of the rear. Every strike on fuel depots, command posts, airfields, and ferries raises the cost of staying. Moscow cannot protect its own settlers, cannot keep the bridge functioning without constant fear, cannot hide that the "Russian world" there is built on stolen property and sustained by terror.
This is not charity from the West. This is the cheapest possible insurance policy Europe could buy. Let me spell it out in the language isolationists pretend to understand: every Ukrainian drone and missile that forces another Russian regiment to guard rear areas is one less battalion available to roll west. A Moscow victory in Ukraine would not stop at our border. It would validate the model of grabbing territory by force, and the next targets are already on the menu. Paying now in weapons and sanctions is dramatically cheaper than paying later in your own soldiers and cities.
The Kremlin propagandists will scream "escalation" while their own hybrid war against NATO countries runs 24/7. GPS jamming over civilian airspace, sabotage, assassination plots, election interference. Yet some Western politicians still treat Moscow as a normal state with legitimate security concerns instead of the imperial project it has always been. There are no legitimate security concerns when your solution to every neighbor's independence is conquest or subversion.
Crimea, Donbas, all occupied land must return to Ukrainian control and then be cleansed of the collaborators and agents who enabled the terror. No frozen lines, no "compromise" that leaves Russian leverage inside Ukraine. Imperialism does not negotiate itself out of existence. It is dismantled on the battlefield or it regrows. History is littered with the corpses of empires that learned this the hard way. Moscow's turn is overdue.
The math is brutal but simple. Moscow loses more soldiers trying to capture villages that had fewer residents before the war than the corpses it piles up. Their meat is cheap but not infinite. Our long-range strike capability is growing monthly. By late 2026 the operational logistics across occupied territories will be burning faster than they can repair. Isolationists in Washington and useful idiots in Europe can keep pretending this is someone else's problem. The people stuck on that bridge already figured out it is not.
Ukraine is not asking for favors. We are doing the bleeding so the rest of the continent does not have to. The faster Europe and the sane parts of America accept that reality and flood us with weapons, the sooner this ends with Moscow broken into the dozen smaller states it should have become in 1991. Anything less is just kicking the cost down the road until it lands on your doorstep.
The bridge queue is not a photo op. It is proof the strategy works. Keep striking. Keep isolating. Keep making their occupation more expensive than they can afford. Victory is the only language they understand, and we are teaching it every single night.
https://x.com/LetsArmUKR/status/2068837594721366143?s=20
wakakakaka… keep yr mfering c&p fart & wait for the last laugh lah
DeleteThis "flight event", if it spreads virally as I suggest in my pinned post of June 11, will likely become far more effective than bringing down the Kerch Bridge on Russia's view of the war and Putin's reign.
ReplyDeleteUkraine just took out three ferries that went to and from Crimea. The Russians apparently just stopped rail traffic from Crimea to the north (or via the Kerch Bridge?). Sales of gasoline or diesel to civilians was banned as of Monday morning in Crimea. And Ukraine has been pummeling Russian military and naval targets in Crimea at will for many weeks.
The five to eight hundred thousands of Russians who "emigrated" to Crimea after 2014, as urged by Moscow, must be terrified. Many of them took over houses and businesses after Russia transported a hundred thousand Crimeans to other areas. What will happen to them if the Russian troops are forced to withdraw?
Taking down the bridge would be a big deal -- but only a one-day (or two) event. A couple weeks of global coverage of a hundred thousand illegal Russian carpetbaggers clogging the roads in fear could bring the end to Putin.
Slava Ukraini!
https://x.com/CyranoUSA/status/2068978940543176749?s=20
wakakakaka… good for a laugh - on the know-nothingness of Ukraine dying military strategy
DeleteCrimea has 800,000 Russian settlers. We'll see how many stay when there's no fuel and less food .... 🤮
ReplyDeleteThe settlers moved in for the cheap property and the imperial swagger. They'll move out the same way: running, terrified, and wondering why the same state that stole their new home cant keep the lights on.
https://x.com/LetsArmUKR/status/2068974984156901377?s=20
ditto…above
Delete