Donetsk region is a gateway for the Russian army, not the final goal of the war

From a bunker in eastern Ukraine, a 33-year-old servicewoman asks her comrade to send a reconnaissance drone over her hometown, hoping to see it one last time before it becomes another city destroyed by years of war, the Associated Press reports. The media spoke to Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk, who say the region is seen as a gateway for Russian infiltration, not the final goal of the war, Focus reports.

The soldier took up arms a decade ago to defend his native Donetsk region, where Ukraine has been fighting Russian-backed forces since 2014. Since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the region has become a symbol of Ukraine's struggle for survival. The development of the fighting in Donetsk is seen as an indicator of each side's chances in the war.

After more than 10 years of war, Ukraine has lost control of about 70 percent of the region.

"I saw my school destroyed, and the community center where I used to take dance lessons was reduced to ruins," Fox said in a trench near her beloved Kostyantynivka, where Russian forces are relentlessly advancing. "Fox" was given in the AP story by her call sign, according to Ukrainian military protocol.

"It hurts because your whole life flashes before your eyes – "the days when I was a little girl, the places and moments that were dear to me," Fox also shared.

The country's industrial heart has been destroyed

Before 2014, the Donetsk region, home to over 4 million people, was one of the most densely populated areas in Ukraine and a key industrial, political and economic center. But it has borne the brunt of the country’s financial losses since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with a report last year by the Kiev Institute of Economics saying it was responsible for nearly half of the $14.4 billion in damage inflicted on Ukrainian businesses.

Donetsk residents make up nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s internally displaced population, according to the International Organization for Migration, and with much of the country’s once-powerful industrial heartland now in ruins, an active battlefield or under occupation, they have little hope of ever returning.

Like many others in Ukraine, this is not the first time Fox has lost her home to war. In 2022, Russian forces captured Mariupol, the southern city of Donetsk, where she also lived. This year, she has watched the front line move closer to her hometown.

Why Donetsk?

The most active stretch of the 1,250-kilometer front line is the Donetsk region, where both sides are trying to make gains before winter sets in and slows the pace of the fighting.

Russia already controls most of Donbas – as it calls Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk – which it annexed along with two southern regions three years ago.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Kiev to cede control of the rest, which analysts say would give Moscow a permanent foothold from which to threaten other parts of Ukraine. With the stakes so high, Ukraine is determined to resist at all costs and defend every inch it still controls.

To advance into Kherson, Russia would have to cross the Dnieper River, and the neighboring Zaporizhia region presents its own logistical challenges due to its flat and open terrain, according to Taras Chmut, a military analyst and director of the Come Back Alive Foundation, a non-governmental organization and charity that raises funds to equip Ukrainian forces.

Chmut said Russia’s actions in Sumy and Kharkiv – regions in the northeast where Moscow has maintained a foothold – are not serious territorial gains but an attempt to create a trump card for future negotiations, even as US President Donald Trump's efforts to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table have stalled.

"When you can't agree at the negotiating table, you agree on the battlefield," says Chmut. "Russia will stop where it is stopped by force, not where it decides to."

Pavlo Yurchuk, commander of the 63rd Brigade, which has been trying to stop Russia's advance in Donetsk for more than a decade, believes that the intense fighting in the region is due more to politics than military logic, as the terrain makes large-scale offensives extremely difficult.

"There is no strategic advantage in this area for conducting rapid offensive operations," Yurchuk told reporters, pointing to the network of rivers - including the Seversky Donets - canals and thousands of fortified villages, cellars and bunkers that benefit the defenders.

"But because of its proximity to Russia, historical economic ties and the Soviet-era imposed legacy of the Russian language, Putin presents the region as historically Russian".

"The Kremlin has convinced part of the population that the region is ethnically Russian and therefore must be "liberated", Yurchuk claims.

My home is all of Ukraine

For Ukraine, the Donetsk region is the place where a new generation of professional soldiers has grown up during a decade of hostilities.

"A lot of blood has been shed here and more will be shed", says the commander of a company from "Azov".

Ukraine could achieve success if it concentrates all its forces in Donetsk, says the Azov commander, a native of western Ukraine who has been fighting intermittently since 2015. But that is not possible because "he (Putin) will continue to push on all fronts."

After years of fighting for control of the region, Ukrainians fear that its loss would not only render meaningless the thousands of lives lost but also doom the country to instability. And few on the front lines believe that Russia's ambitions will end in Donetsk.

"If we have to fight for another three years for 30 kilometers, then we will fight for another three years for 30 kilometers," Yurchuk added.

"Fox" says he is not fighting just for his roots in the Donetsk region.

"You are no longer fighting for a building or a city“,"Fox" shares. "Now my home is all of Ukraine.“