{"id":139944,"date":"2025-08-12T15:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T15:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/139944\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T15:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T15:06:13","slug":"russia-pierces-ukrainian-defense-in-donetsk-as-putin-trump-talks-approach-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/139944\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia pierces Ukrainian defense in Donetsk as Putin-Trump talks approach \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, Russian leader Putin will meet American President Donald Trump in Alaska to potentially discuss ending the war between Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy has voiced concerns that the Russians would try to deceive the U.S.<\/a> about their true intentions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has reportedly demanded<\/a> Ukraine surrender parts of the Donetsk region that Moscow does not fully control as part of a possible ceasefire deal, which Kyiv has rejected.<\/p>\n

Though the Ukrainian military denied that Russian troops secured<\/a> new positions in Donetsk after advancing roughly 15 kilometers in the past five days through a narrow sector, DeepState, which uses open-source intelligence to monitor front-line movements, says senior commanders are systematically downplaying the scale of the problem \u2014 an assessment echoed by some military figures on the ground.<\/p>\n

Though it is \u201cpremature\u201d to call the Russian advances in Donetsk an operational-level breakthrough, the Institute for Study of War wrote Monday<\/a>, Russian troops will \u201cvery likely seek to mature their tactical advances into an operational-level breakthrough in the coming days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This advance impedes Ukrainian logistics and puts several cities, which are critical defense strongholds in the region, at risk of encirclement and loss.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s General Staff said Monday that it decided to deploy additional forces<\/a> to the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bohdan Krotevych, a former lieutenant colonel in Ukraine\u2019s National Guard, wrote on X<\/a> that the situation in the area is \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d He blamed the fragmentation of units and personnel across the front line and the absence of a clear strategy from senior leadership, a recurring criticism in recent months from Ukrainian military personnel and volunteers.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian soldiers have also long warned about false battlefield reporting<\/a> and senior commanders\u2019 lack of awareness<\/a> of the situation on the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, Russian leader Putin will meet American President Donald Trump in Alaska to potentially discuss ending the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17749,262,69,13660,1802,50,257,273,67,274,3656,131,275,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-139944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-cities","9":"tag-defense","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-logistics","12":"tag-military","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-vladimir-putin","18":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","19":"tag-war","20":"tag-war-in-ukraine","21":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115016419461657124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}