After U.S. Trip, Zelensky Returns to an Enduring War

Cities across Ukraine have suffered airstrikes in recent days, and Moscow is pressing a slow advance in the east. Kyiv has hit back against arms depots, trying to disrupt Russian logistics.

President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to Ukraine this weekend from a high-stakes diplomatic trip to the United States with limited new aid for his armed forces and mounting challenges on the battlefield.

While the Ukrainian leader was busy trying to rally support from the Biden administration and meeting with former President Donald J. Trump, Russian forces were pressing their grinding advance in Ukraine’s east, capturing more villages and closing in on a key Ukrainian stronghold.

They also continued their assault on Ukrainian cities, killing 10 in Sumy, in the northeast, in a strike on Saturday, while maintaining their attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and energy facilities. Ukraine, for its part, struck several Russian ammunition depots in an attempt to disrupt Moscow’s military logistics.

Here’s a closer look at the current situation on the battlefield.

Russia presses ahead in the east

For the past few months, Russia has concentrated its attacks on the area around Pokrovsk, a road and rail hub in eastern Ukraine, and Moscow’s forces are within about five miles of the city. The capture of Pokrovsk would seriously disrupt the Ukrainian Army’s logistical lines in the surrounding Donetsk region.

After making quick progress toward Pokrovsk, Russia’s direct advance has slowed in recent weeks. Its troops have run up against a line of Ukrainian fortifications, strengthened by reinforcements sent by Kyiv, defending the city’s outskirts.

Ukrainian soldiers and military experts say they now expect a more protracted battle for Pokrovsk that could lead to the city’s being seized after a sustained bombing campaign, similar to Russia’s earlier assaults on cities such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

“We are going to see a siege of Pokrovsk as we have seen play out for a number of other cities, and I think it’s more than likely that Pokrovsk will end up being destroyed in that siege,” Michael Kofman, a military analyst, told the podcast War on the Rocks on Sunday.

For now, the Russian Army has redirected some of its offensive efforts to the area south of Pokrovsk. Moscow’s troops have been trying to encircle the towns of Kurakhove and Vuhledar.

Vuhledar, which has been a Ukrainian stronghold, is now caught in a pincer movement, with only 1.5 miles separating the western and eastern flanks of the Russian attack around the town. “Vuhledar is likely to fall very soon,” Mr. Kofman said.

Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the government-run Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine, said that Russian troops had improved their encirclement tactics, pushing through weak points in Ukrainian lines with small squads. “It has increased the tempo of their advances,” he said in a text message, adding that Russia currently does not have the capacity to launch large-scale offensives.

The Russian Army may be trying a similar pincer movement around Kupiansk, a town in the northeast that Ukrainian forces recaptured in the fall of 2022. Its troops have recently seized a narrow spit of land to the south of Kupiansk, pushing toward the Oskil River.

A drone battalion from Ukraine’s 92nd brigade said last week that it had repelled a large-scale Russian assault toward the river which involved around 50 armored vehicles. The claim could not be independently verified.

Counterattacks near the northern border

Since launching its offensive into the Kursk region of western Russia in August, Ukraine has captured about 400 square miles there. But this month, Moscow’s troops began counterattacking, reclaiming several villages.

Vincent Tourret, an analyst at the French Foundation for Strategic Research, said that the Ukrainian cross-border offensive had lifted morale and shown Western partners that Kyiv could still take the initiative. But he added that it had failed to divert Russian troops from hot spots on the eastern front and had come at an important cost in military equipment.

An open-source intelligence researcher who uses the online handle Naalsio and who analyzes combat footage reported that, a month into Ukraine’s offensive, which began on Aug. 6, Kyiv had lost at least 121 pieces of equipment in the Kursk region — comparable to Russian losses near Pokrovsk over the same period. Russian equipment losses near Kursk, however, were three times greater than Ukraine’s losses near Pokrovsk, Naalsio reported, an assessment that could not be independently confirmed.

To respond to the Ukrainian offensive, Russia has pulled some troops from the area it captured this spring in the Kharkiv region, according to analysts, helping Ukrainian forces to go back on the attack in that area.

Last week, the Ukrainian Army said it had recaptured a large plant, now mostly in ruins, in Volchansk, a town northeast of the city of Kharkiv that Russia had tried to seize during its spring offensive. Geolocated footage analyzed by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, indicated that the Ukrainians had “likely seized” the plant.

Punishing air assaults

In recent days, Russia has hit several Ukrainian cities that are relatively distant from the front lines, sometimes using powerful bombs carrying hundreds of pounds of explosives, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Those attacks, which have resulted in civilian casualties, have heightened the sense among Ukrainians that no city is safe.

Ukrainian officials said that 10 people were killed in an attack on a hospital in Sumy on Saturday. The United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said that two drones had hit the hospital 45 minutes apart, with most of the fatalities occurring during the second attack, “which hit as first responders arrived at the site and patients attempted to evacuate.”

Ukraine has also conducted strikes into Russia, focusing on depots that contain thousands of tons of ammunition in northwestern and southwestern Russia, according to Western officials. The British Defense Ministry said that those strikes would almost certainly disrupt Russian military operations to some degree.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• Two Soul Mates Reconnect: Sofia Malina and Polina Muzhychkova met in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, but were separated after it came under brutal assault by Russian forces. They were reunited after a long and harrowing saga.
• Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine: President Vladimir Putin of Russia said that he planned to lower the threshold for his country’s use of nuclear weapons, an escalation in his efforts to deter the United States from expanding its aid to Ukraine.
• A National Icon Fights: Serhiy Zhadan is a beloved Ukrainian poet and rock star. Furious over Russia’s invasion, he enlisted in the army even as his band still plays and his readings fill halls.

How We Verify Our Reporting

• Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
• We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts.