Towards the end of the third year of the war, the Russian army increased the pace of occupation in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. After the capture of Avdiivka in early 2024, news of captured villages became a daily occurrence. In October, the Russian army occupied the towns of Ugledar and Selidovo, and now fighting is taking place in Kurakhovo. Back in the summer, Russian units advanced to the important logistical center of the Ukrainian armed forces in the Donetsk region - the city of Pokrovsk.
Austrian military historian Colonel Markus Reisner points out that the main efforts of the Russian units are concentrated there. According to him, Russia hopes for an "operational breakthrough". "The most critical situation is south of Pokrovsk. The Russian side's goal is not only to surround the Ukrainian units, but also to cut off their supply lines," Reisner said.
According to him, Russia is in a hurry to achieve maximum success before the inauguration of the newly elected US President Donald Trump on January 20. Trump has said that he will try to stop the war and bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table from the very first days. How this will happen is an open question.
How quickly can the Donetsk region be occupied?
It was in the Pokrovsk region at the end of the year that Russia made the most progress towards President Putin's goal - to reach the administrative border of the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow declared its own in September 2022, enshrining the occupation in the constitution. In addition to Donetsk Oblast, these are the almost completely occupied Luhansk Oblast, as well as the partially occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts.
If it captures Pokrovsk, Russia will reach the border with Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, from where it will be able to move its forces towards the regional centers of Dnipro or Zaporizhia, as well as towards the northern part of Donetsk Oblast. Several cities there remain under Kiev's control, including Kramatorsk - an industrial and administrative center that is of strategic importance for supplying Ukrainian units in Donbass.
How quickly could Russia reach the administrative borders of Donetsk Oblast? No one can predict, but the experts DW spoke to do not expect a breakthrough on the front at least in the first months of 2025. Everything will depend on the resources of the Ukrainians - on ammunition and, above all, on soldiers, says Markus Reisner. According to him, the Ukrainian army can hold the front line, but it is already difficult for it to defend itself, including because of the terrain. "The Russians have reached the third line of Ukrainian defense, after which there is open terrain and few prepared defensive positions", the expert explains.
At the end of August, when the Russian army approached about ten kilometers from Pokrovsk, Ukrainian military observer Yuri Butusov suggested in a conversation with DW that by the end of the year the Russians could occupy Selidovo, Mirnograd and Pokrovsk. Selidovo has since been captured.
Despite the accelerated progress, in general the Russian units are "far behind schedule, by months", says Ukrainian observer Sergei Grabsky, a reserve colonel. According to him, Chasov Yar, a suburb of Bakhmut, which was occupied in the spring of 2023, should have been captured on May 9, and Pokrovsk - by October 1. At the end of December 2024, this has not yet happened, he notes.
Exhaustion on both sides of the front
According to Grabsky, there are no critical situations for the Ukrainian side - Russia has not achieved success on other sections of the front with a total length of over 1,200 kilometers. Ukraine is conducting a "strategic defense", while the Russian army is advancing due to the fact that in certain sections it surpasses its enemy by five or six times and at the cost of "incredible losses", the expert says.
According to Ukrainian and Western estimates, the Russian Federation suffered record losses in the fall - more than a thousand fighters were killed every day. And the total number of Russian killed and wounded, according to estimates by American government sources, exceeds half a million. Recently, "the enemy has been reducing the intensity of fighting", Grabsky says, citing his sources on the front line.
Markus Reisner agrees that the advancing Russian forces are "very exhausted". However, the same applies to the Ukrainian armed forces. Experts' estimates of the losses of the Ukrainian side are lower - they are measured in hundreds. At the same time, the mobilization resource in the Russian Federation is many times greater. "Russia can mobilize more than a million people, but its problem is the ability of these personnel to meet the needs of the army," Grabsky believes. According to him, these capabilities are limited to the figure of 300,000, which limits the pace of the Russian offensive.
The responsibility for what is happening on the battlefield lies with both Ukraine and its Western partners, the Ukrainian retired colonel believes. To illustrate his words, he quotes what a Ukrainian commander told him: "What good are ten "Leopard" tanks if we only have two crews?". In this regard, let us recall that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regularly blames the West for insufficient arms supplies to Ukraine.
Kiev wants to hold onto Kursk Oblast until Trump arrives
Despite the difficult situation in Donbass, Ukraine continues to hold onto part of the territory of the Kursk Oblast occupied in August. At his closing press conference, President Putin did not answer the question of when Russia would be able to liberate the region. Sergey Grabsky believes that the Ukrainian Kursk operation was a success - at least because it repelled a 50,000-strong Russian army and destroyed facilities on Russian territory.
Markus Reisner suggests that Ukraine will try to stay in the Kursk region at least until Donald Trump takes office in order to use this in negotiations. Moreover, the Austrian expert assumes that Ukraine may try to enter Russian territory once again immediately before the new president takes office. Ukraine needs regular strikes with Western weapons - ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles - to successfully deter Russia's offensive. "It is not enough to deliver spectacular strikes once every two weeks - the Russians' logistical points must be attacked daily", says the expert. However, this is exactly what is not happening, he adds.
Author: Roman Goncharenko