Russia claims the capture of two new localities in eastern Ukraine

In recent days, Russian troops have accelerated their advance in the south of Donbass in eastern Ukraine, but also further north on the Kupiansk front towards the Oskil River. Thus, this Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in a press release the “liberation” – according to the Russian term – of two new Ukrainian localities. The first, in the Donetsk oblast, Kurakhivka, is a large village located a few kilometers from the town of Kurakhove, a Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass that the Russians are trying to envelop from the North and the South. The second is the small village of Pershotravneve in the Kharkiv region, close to the eastern Luhansk region.

Kurakhove is one of the battles the Russians are waging to try to take the Ukrainian fortresses in Donbass. To avoid attacking the small industrial town head-on from the east, protected by thick defenses, they carried out a maneuver to envelop it. Since last week, they have attacked from the south starting from the town of Vouhledar, which fell in mid-October, and seized around 200 km2 of land and several villages.

Such Russian territorial gains, although modest in absolute terms, had not been observed in Ukraine since March 2022 and the first phase of the war. At the same time, since the 1000 km2 Russian salient created last February and the capture of the town of Vouhledar, they are also advancing north of Kurakhove, along a large water reservoir which protects the town. It is in this area that the Russians conquered Kurakhivka: the cartographers of the conflict, who rely on geolocalized images, confirm at least partial capture of the locality.

Balcony above Donbass

Pershotravneve, the second village that the Russians claim to capture, is located much further north, about 150 kilometers from Kourakhove. It is part of the broader Kupiansk front, straddling the Kharkiv and Lugansk oblasts, where the situation is also deteriorating for the Ukrainian army.

In particular, the Russians are seeking to split the Ukrainian system east of the strategic Oskil river into two, a maneuver which is bearing fruit since the Russian forces have already reached the watercourse near the village of Kruhlyakivka, based on several OSINT sources (open source research). Now, in the North, the Ukrainians defending the town of Kupiansk on the left bank are separated from the Ukrainians positioned further south around Lyman in a large region which overlooks the northern Donbass still held by kyiv. Kourakhivka is certainly only a village, but it is at its height that the main supply route crosses the Oskil and goes from the right bank to the left bank.

The capture of Pershotravneve – not confirmed by all the conflict’s cartographers – shows that the Russians are seeking to widen their salient towards the South to further separate the two Ukrainian pockets, the logistics of which will be increasingly a challenge.

In late summer 2022, the Ukrainians managed, in a successful lightning counter-offensive, to drive the Russians out of southern Kharkiv Oblast, who failed to re-establish their defensive positions along of the Oskil River and relied on the course of another river further to the East, the Zherebets. Since the summer of 2023, advancing extremely slowly, Moscow’s troops have been trying to push westward by crossing from one river to another to regain lost ground. The issue is strategic because the region east of the Oskil forms a balcony which would threaten from the North the two great Ukrainian fortresses of the Donetsk oblast, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, already made vulnerable by Russian advances from the South -Donbass.