As negotiations over the war carry on, President Vladimir V. Putin is pushing hard with tactics that have evolved over three and a half years.
On a map, the gains hardly seem noticeable, measured in hundreds of yards, not hundreds of miles. But as President Trump presses Ukraine and Russia to make a deal to end their war, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is pushing to capture as much land as possible along a frontline that stretches about 750 miles, almost the distance from Chicago to New York.
As ever growing swarms of surveillance drones make any movement on the battlefield dangerous, the Russians are sending in small groups of soldiers on foot who are harder to detect. They effectively sneak past the Ukrainian troops, regroup and then attack, repeating this cycle as they inch forward.
These groups gained some territory earlier this month, especially in the crucial eastern Donetsk region near the embattled city of Pokrovsk. Larger formations of Russian troops also outflanked some Ukrainian defenses with drones and sheer numbers, raising fears that the frontline could start to crumble as the most concerted effort at peace talks in three years gets underway.
Ukrainian forces have largely pushed the Russians back from their recent gains and stabilized the front line after moving in reinforcements, according to interviews and battlefield maps. The fighting, however, remains intense. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, said on Wednesday that Russian troops were stepping up their offensive actions in the north of Donetsk while continuing to push toward Pokrovsk.
“Given that political negotiations and deals are starting to emerge, Putin is trying to use the short amount of time left to grab as much territory as he can,” said Col. Dmytro Palisa, commander of Ukraine’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade. His team recently moved to an area near Pokrovsk, which Russian troops have been trying to capture for more than a year.
On Sunday, he sat on a dark blue pleather couch inside a dugout near the fighting. Bombs could be heard in the distance. The makeshift room, built of plywood and netting, smelled like soil.
“He doesn’t care how many Russian soldiers die or how much equipment is lost,” Colonel Palisa said of Mr. Putin. “What matters to him now is to seize as much of the Donetsk region as possible. This, in turn, could have a negative consequence for us, because it would force us to enter any negotiations from a weaker position.”
It has been a long time since this was a fast-moving war. Russia gained much of the territory it now holds in 2014, when it seized the Crimean peninsula and then fomented the proxy war that followed in eastern Ukraine, and in the early months after launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia’s control over Ukrainian territory has been close to 20 percent for the past year.
But recently, Ukrainian defenses along a frontline running through the east and south of the country have at times flagged. Russian troops captured twice as much territory in May, after starting their spring offensive, than they had the month before.
While the Ukrainian military has stemmed significant territorial losses, the most battle-hardened brigades are exhausted after being used to plug holes and engage in the most serious fighting wherever it exists.
The Azov brigade was recently moved to the Pokrovsk area, along with brigades like the 33rd and the 59th. Many soldiers have been fighting since 2022; some, since 2014. Despite a draft of all men from the age of 25 to 60, despite flashy billboard campaigns featuring soldiers riding giant cats, the Ukrainian Army is having difficulty recruiting new soldiers. Last month, Ukraine even adopted a law allowing citizens over 60 to voluntarily enlist.
To understand what is happening in the war, look no farther than Donetsk, a focal point both on the battlefield and in peace negotiations.
