Irina Rybakova is acutely aware that the front line is inching closer towards Kramatorsk. She served in eastern Ukraine for several years and saw troops forced out of one strategic location after another. But she said the past few weeks have been “insane.”
The city remains one of Ukraine’s last strongholds in the Donbas region, but Russian forces are drawing dangerously close. Almost all bridges in the city have been destroyed, and barrages of guided bombs and drone fire are now commonplace.
Rybakova, a Kramatorsk-based spokeswoman for Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade, told CNN on Monday that “attacks are happening dozens of times a day. Dozens of cars, public buildings, residential buildings, administration buildings, garages are being attacked. They’re just setting everything on fire.”
“From evening to morning, hardly anyone goes out,” she said. “During the day, there are gunmen everywhere…everyone is walking around with a rifle, going out to get coffee with a rifle, going to the store with a rifle, etc. Because drones are everywhere now and you never know. They could strike at any time.”
The first visit of US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to Kiev on Sunday ended without much progress, but Ukraine is losing ground in many areas on its eastern front. This is a major change in fortunes compared to the spring, when Kiev had liberated more land than it had lost.
Jenny Olmsted, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based conflict watchdog, said the situation was changing in Russia’s favor, although a quick resolution was unlikely.
“(Russian forces) are carrying out continuous infiltration missions, slowly advancing towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and also in Kostiantyniivka, but at a very slow pace,” she said.
According to ISW, Russia advanced or invaded about 124 square kilometers (47.8 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, about a quarter of the territory it captured in the same month a year earlier.
This is at a glacial pace and comes at great cost to Moscow. Western intelligence estimates that Russia is losing about 40,000 soldiers per month, a rate of about 340 casualties per square kilometer.
Unfortunately for Ukraine, however, Russia is chipping away at the so-called “Fortress Zone” in the east, a chain of four industrial cities that forms the backbone of eastern Ukraine’s defense.
This belt is key to protecting not only the remaining areas of the Donbass region, but also the rest of eastern and central Ukraine. The topography and population centers, as well as the roads and railways that connect them, create a natural barrier in front of the less-defended, sparsely populated plains to the west. The concern is that if Russia were to break through, it could advance deeper into Ukraine at an even faster pace.
That is why in recent years Ukraine has poured resources into strengthening the cities that form this line of defense: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Drushkivka and Kostyantynivka.
This fortified area has been slowly eroding over the past four and a half years. Kostyantinivka, the southernmost anchor, has now effectively lost its role as a stronghold. Russia has occupied the city for almost a year, but while some Ukrainian resistance forces remain in the city’s north, Kiev’s operational value has long since disappeared.
It’s a recurring theme at the forefront. Russian forces cannot seize cities and towns in a quick offensive while leaving much of their infrastructure intact. Instead, Moscow is waging a slow and brutal war, making it uninhabitable.
It took Russian forces nine months of fighting to capture the nearby city of Bakhmut, and almost two years to capture Pokrovsk, another supply hub. By the time they gained complete control, the two cities were nearly destroyed and their strategic value to Ukraine was gone, Olmsted said.
Still, each small gain for Russia has huge propaganda potential.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made it clear, including over the weekend, that he has no intention of abandoning his war goals in Ukraine, including seizing control of all of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia already occupies about 81% of Donetsk and most of Luhansk. Moscow announced in April that it had succeeded in taking full control of the latter, but Kiev said it retained some control.
Yuri Ushakov, a close Kremlin negotiator, said Putin told Witkov and Kushner that Russian forces were making “visible progress” on the battlefield and would soon achieve their objectives there.
CNN has not been able to verify this claim, but points out the importance of Russia’s information warfare. President Putin has reportedly said he expects Russian troops to take control of the rest of both regions by the end of the year (after he has reportedly missed 14 previous deadlines).
Some 93,000 Ukrainians, including more than 4,800 children, still live in areas controlled by Kiev, according to the Donetsk regional military junta, which is effectively controlled by Ukraine. But life there is becoming increasingly difficult. Henady Yudin, a police officer with the White Angels special unit that helps the military evacuate civilians from frontline villages, said it was now impossible for police officers to drive into Dobropilya town or nearby villages.
“The military is evacuating people on foot, and our troops are picking us up about 10 kilometers from Dobropilya. That’s the closest point we can reach. Otherwise, evacuation there is completely impossible. The whole area is mined and the number of drones is insane,” Yudin told CNN.
Rybakova told CNN that there are still many civilians living in Kramatorsk, but that she expects the situation to change.
“Life is still going on. (Authorities) have not yet imposed a curfew… This has had a big impact (on towns further east). All businesses have started leaving. They say they will impose a curfew soon,” she said.
Kramatorsk has long served as a strategic rear point for Ukrainian military units operating along the Eastern Front, as well as a place where exhausted troops can retreat for a few days of rest before their next mission. But that’s no longer an option.
“There is shelling here every day: guided bombs, massive barrages of eight at a time,” Rybakova said. “Last night, my old house was bombed. We moved there a few months ago, and now it’s completely destroyed.”
As Russia continues to creep closer to these cities, remaining residents fear that Moscow is preparing the ground for future attacks.
“They are setting the conditions and preparing the battle space for the attack on Sloviask,” Olmstead said.
“They are really trying to reduce Ukraine’s logistics and defense capabilities in the region, making it difficult for the Ukrainian military to secure logistics in forward positions and in the city.”
