Since September’s rapid advance, the Ukrainians have made little headway east. And the Russian armed forces are only making small gains in territory. The course of the front remains largely the same. The warring parties are currently relying primarily on artillery systems and tanks.
In the Donbass coal and steel region in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian troops are fighting fiercely, with the front line hardly changing at the moment. The Ukrainian General Staff reported artillery and tank shelling on villages such as Vodyane, Krasnohorivka and Maryinka near the town of Avdiivka. The Kiev information was not independently verifiable, but in this case it was consistent with reports from Russian military bloggers.
Ukrainian-controlled Avdiivka is a few kilometers north of Donetsk. Because the front between Ukrainian forces and Moscow-controlled separatists has been running there since 2014, Ukraine’s positions are well developed.
In the nearly nine months since the Russian invasion on February 24, Russian forces have made little gains in terrain. According to Russian data, the village of Opytne was conquered last. According to estimates by the US Institute for War Studies (ISW), Russia has transferred troops to this sector of the front that have become free as a result of the withdrawal from the Kherson region.
According to the situation report of the Ukrainian general staff, another focus of the fighting is the region around the city of Bakhmut. There, Ukrainian positions were fired on with tanks, mortars, tube and rocket artillery. Here, too, the course of the front has remained practically unchanged for months.
There was also heavy artillery fire on the Kupyansk front. This important railway junction in the Kharkiv region was recaptured in September’s rapid advance by the Ukrainian army. Since then, however, the Ukrainians have made little progress towards the east. According to local authorities, Russian troops fired at a village in the Zaporizhia region at night with the S-300 system missiles, which were actually intended for anti-aircraft defense. A building was destroyed but no one was injured.