Battlefield of Ukraine Some Areas Get Worse Others Under Control Mostly Hot Battles AND More!
 |
| The 148th Artillery Brigade of the Ukrainian Army in October in the Zaporizhzhia region of eastern Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times |
Cassandra VinogradOleksandr Chubko and Maria Varenikova
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
New York Times
adamfoxie blog
Yesterday or the yesterday before yesterday U.S. could have given Ukraine the right Tools to Ukraine. Some of those tools are parked in the dessert, the US are not using in any big capacity. You have Planes capable of protecting the troops by flying low with super cannons and missiles and the air over contested areas in Ukraine and the war is over. Im talking about the A-10 Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt II.
But how can the war be over when the US only want it to be over if Russia gets the territories Ukraine got back and some Russia are still fighting over. This is been the idea under Biden who did not want to escalate fails to give Ukraine what it needed and only would give it after months of begging and prodding.
He failed to predict just like he did with Anita and Justice Thomas what he was doing by taking the side of Thomas on the Sexual abuse case. Yet we are still dealing with Thomas and he will go down as the worse grifted and dishonesty's justice in the history of the nation. Anita became a University Professor after these two man Thomas and Biden destroyed her character.
Then Trump and his Stepson want to do business in Russia or Russia's Formerly Ukraine. Ukraine is a democracy and there will be problems in Trump doing anything their parliament doesn't want but in Russia they only deal with one man, Putin. If you were asking how come Trump son in law showed from nowhere to help with Russia's 28 Stupid points, he came with his back accounts ready to deal with Putin.
He never shows his face according to what we have seen unless there is money to be made. Trump doesn't love anybody according to Trump but if he was to love someone would be the Husband of his daughter.
Adam Gonzalez, publisher Adamfoxie blog
 |
| Thunderbolt |
It was a clear attempt to project Russian power.
Hours before meeting U.S. officials in Moscow this past week about their plan to end the war, President Vladimir V. Putin claimed that Russia’s forces had seized the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after a monthslong fight.
The reality was murkier. Slivers of the city were still contested, according to battlefield maps and the Ukrainian military. But Mr. Putin’s claim, even if premature, reflected a trend shaping his unbending approach to negotiations: Russian forces are on the march.
“The Russians do have the upper hand,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group. Ukraine is not yet at the point where it must capitulate, he said, but it “is looking weak enough that the Russians think that they can impose demands.”
Mr. Putin has ordered the Russian military to prepare for winter combat, signaling after the talks with U.S. officials that he is not budging from his hard-line demands. President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has since held a series of discussions in Miami with Ukraine’s delegation that both sides called “constructive.”
As these statements were being released, Russia unleashed more than 650 drones and 51 missiles on towns and cities across Ukraine in an assault that began overnight on Friday and stretched through Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials said.
On Saturday evening, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wrote on social media that he had “just had a long and substantive phone call” with Mr. Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a businessman who does some international diplomacy for Mr. Trump, during which they “agreed on the next steps and formats for talks with the United States.”
 |
| Soldiers in camouflage stand in the dark, lit by a light on one of their helmets. |
Ukrainian soldiers last month near Pokrovsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.Credit...Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters
Nov 1 gains by Russia. Gains by Ukraine
 |
| Note: As of Dec. 3, 2025Source: The Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats ProjectBy Josh Holder |
In recent weeks, Russian forces have advanced on several fronts. They are on the brink of capturing Pokrovsk, a onetime logistics hub in the eastern region of Donetsk, and have nearly encircled its neighbor, Myrnohrad. They are moving quicker in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. They are pressing closer to the northeastern city of Kupiansk, and they are making gains around the eastern city of Siversk, according to battlefield maps, analysts and soldiers.
The advances have been slow and costly, in both lives and equipment. Ukrainian officials and analysts say Mr. Putin could still be years away from achieving his territorial goals. Chief among them is capturing the rest of the Donetsk region, which would give Russia all of the broader eastern Ukrainian area known as the Donbas.
But Russia’s pace is quickening, and incremental moves have started to add up. Moscow’s forces captured 505 square kilometers, or nearly 200 square miles, of territory in November, up from 267 square kilometers, or about 100 square miles, in October, according to the battlefield map maintained by DeepState, a Ukrainian group with ties to the military.
“The future looks really, really grim for Ukraine,” said Mr. Kastehelmi, the analyst. “I don’t see a clear path out.”
For now, Ukraine appears to have enough resources to keep the front line from collapsing. But it is bending. Mr. Putin has suggested that Ukraine, facing manpower shortages and uncertainty about Western aid, should concede to his demands before the war gets even worse.
The Russian leader, in an interview with an Indian news outlet that was published on Thursday, said Russia would take additional territory in Donetsk by whatever means necessary.
The Kremlin’s summer offensive, which was aimed at capturing all of Donetsk, produced limited gains. But starting in the fall, the tide there started to turn in Russia’s favor. After months of bombarding Pokrovsk with artillery, drones and glide bombs, Russian forces punched through a string of villages and settlements to fight their way into the city.
“Things started to fall apart a bit on our side” starting in September, said Ihor, a Ukrainian drone pilot in the area who gave only his first name, according to military protocol. “The line just began collapsing from exhaustion.”
Russian forces are sending fixed-wing Molniya drones and waves of mini kamikaze drones that carry explosives, he said, adding that Ukraine had nothing comparable in mass production.
The current push for a peace plan is “all bluff,” he said, adding that as long as the Russians have “the ability to press us, they will keep pressing.”
At the same time, Russian forces have taken aim at other critical cities in Donetsk, including Kostiantynivka and Lyman.
 |
| An empty, two-lane street lined with apartment buildings and billboards. Black smoke rises in the background against a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. |
Smoke rising from the besieged city of Kostiantynivka in October.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Oleh Voitsekhovskyi, a Ukrainian captain whose unit is near Lyman, said Russian forces were attacking “all the time” and “along all directions.”
Drone strikes, shelling — it never stops, he said. “In the last two months,” he added, “you can feel an increase in the intensity of hostilities.”
Russian forces move in small groups, he said, as Ukrainian drones keep watch overhead. Heavy fog has made it harder for the drones to fend off the Russians.
Russia’s push toward Kostiantynivka, though, has so far failed to yield much in the way of territorial gains, the DeepState map shows. The same can be said for Lyman.
That has put more emphasis and urgency on Pokrovsk.
A thick fog descends there every day, accompanying “the smell of burned coal and the smell of gunpowder that has a hint of manganese, like at a firing range,” said Maksym Bakulin, who is with the 14th Operational Brigade of the National Guard.
While the city was “alive” a year ago, he added, Pokrovsk’s once bustling streets now have “civilian bodies and military bodies mixed together, with no possibility to retrieve them.”
Russian forces see Pokrovsk as a steppingstone toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, two heavily fortified cities in Donetsk that Ukraine still controls.
Some analysts have questioned Ukraine’s decision to keep fighting in Pokrovsk and incur heavy losses there. Analysts and some Ukrainian soldiers have said Kyiv may be trying to hold on to avoid feeding Russia’s narrative of inevitable victory as peace talks heat up. Staying in Pokrovsk could also increase Russian forces’ losses.
 |
| An orange glow is cast over an apartment building at night as a firefighter aims a water hose at a third-floor window to douse bright yellow flames. |
The scene after a Russian strike on an administrative building in October in Sloviansk.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
As Ukraine concentrated so many resources on that battle, analysts say, Russian forces spotted an opportunity elsewhere on the 75-mile-long front line, in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
Russian forces made a relatively quick march there in recent weeks, seizing about 75 square miles around the city of Huliaipole in November, nearly 40 percent of Moscow’s total territorial gains last month, according to DeepState.
Ukraine has sent some reserves to the area, which has helped slow the advance, “but still the pace there is relatively alarming,” said Mr. Kastehelmi, the analyst.
The onset of winter could reduce the pace of Russia’s advances along the broader front, and also Ukrainian movements. The preponderance of drones is slowing things down even further, forcing a shift away from infantry-heavy attacks. Because of the drones, the front line is less of a line and more of a patch of land, what soldiers call a “kill zone,” up to 15 miles wide in places.
But Russia has a seemingly endless spigot of soldiers and a willingness to absorb heavy losses in a style of warfare that has been likened to a meat grinder.
“Russia has committed itself to a war of attrition, and they are currently trying to militarily break Ukraine, slowly,” Mr. Kastehelmi said.
As the 18-month battle for Pokrovsk seemingly enters its final stages, fears have risen for the neighboring city of Myrnohrad.
Russia is storming Ukrainian positions there daily, said Oleh, a sergeant platoon commander in the area who also would give only his first name per military protocol. Drones have turned the roads in and out into death traps.
“Neither by day nor by night do they give us peace,” Oleh said.
He marveled at Russia’s resources, including night vision, resupply aircraft and soldiers.
“If we have three people, they have 30,” he said. “How much manpower they have is just unreal.”
“But,” he added, “they also did not expect that we would fight for so long.”
Comments