Russian forces have continued to make steady gains in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Oblast amid the Ukrainian cross-border offensive in Kursk.
Russia has focused its offensive toward the Donestk city of Pokrovsk, a major hub for Ukrainian forces in the region. Local officials said Friday that Russian forces were about six miles away from Pokrovsk and ordered an evacuation.
The Associated Press reported that Pokrovsk officials said the Russians were “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day, there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.”
Also on Friday, local officials said a mall in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk was hit by Ukrainian shelling, which caused a large fire and killed at least two people.
According to SouthFront, Russian forces continued to make gains in Donetsk over the weekend, including toward Pokrovsk.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continues in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, where Ukrainian forces claim to have captured about 1,000 square kilometers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that he wants to create a “buffer zone” in Kursk.
Zelensky said Ukraine’s main objective was to destroy as “much Russian war potential” as it could. “In particular, this is the creation of a buffer zone on the territory of the aggressor – our operation in Kursk Oblast,” he said.
If Russia is smart and they are, they will accept an elongated front with Ukraine in Kursk. Ukraine goes from what the west portrays as endless tactical successes, straight towards strategic defeat.
And that extended front will keep creeping westward.
They aren’t and they won’t. They’ll transfer troops to Kursk and send them in meatwaves again. Russians will die in Kursk instead of the Donbas.
>600,000 Russian casualties and counting.
"…In particular, this is the creation of a buffer zone on the territory of the aggressor."
Ah. So Zelenskiyy is doing…exactly what the Russian Federation set out to do – create a buffer zone out of Ukraine, to put some space between the RF and NATO.
For those who don't follow this war closely, Ukraine's attack into Russia was a desperate publicity stunt to hide that it has lost this war, just like the Germans in World War II's "Battle of the Bulge." It wasted its remaining strategic reserve forces grabbing some undefended Russian farmland. Now there is nothing to slow the Russians from rolling through central Ukraine and their advances have quickened.