Ukrainian forces defending the eastern region of Donetsk are heading into the “moment of maximum tension” as Russian forces rush to take territory across Ukraine ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next year, war monitors have claimed.
Mr Trump’s comprehensive victory in the US election, which came off the back of his promises to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, has brought into sharp relief the difficult situation on the frontline for Kyiv.
Russian forces have continued to make gains in the eastern region of Donetsk, advancing along several fronts towards the city of Pokrovsk, a linchpin of the wider area’s defence.
Moscow has also mobilised thousands of North Korean soldiers to push back the Ukrainian incursion into the border region of Kursk, with some success.
And in the Kharkiv region, Russian forces are also staging an attack on the city of Kupiansk, which is key to that area’s wider defence.
Exactly how Mr Trump’s promise to end the war in 24 hours plays out remains to be seen but several unofficial proposals have included plans to freeze the frontline.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has since said that a frozen conflict would be “even worse” than deals struck in 2014 and 2015 to put a pause to fighting during Russia’s first invasion a decade ago.
Whether or not either Ukraine or Vladimir Putin will accept those concessions is also unclear - many say it is unlikely - but the incentive for Russia to seize as much territory as possible is self-evident.
The past few months have seen Moscow seize territory at their fastest rate since March 2022.
Below, we look at the two hotspots of fighting.
Russia’s months-long attack in the direction of Pokrovsk has led to Moscow capturing more than 300 square miles of territory since seizing the city of Avdiivka in February.
It has come at great cost, with western intelligence officials estimating Russia has suffered its highest monthly military personnel losses in the past few months since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Sir Tony Radakin, the UK chief of the defence staff, put the figure at around 1,500 casualties a day.
Nevertheless, a wide bulge can now be seen protruding from the Russian frontline into Ukrainian-held territory of the Donetsk region, towards Pokrovsk.
The region makes up one half of the area known as Donbas – the other half is Luhansk, which is almost entirely controlled by Russia – and has been the site of fighting between Russia and Ukraine since 2014.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his desire to control the entire Donbas.
The Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS), a Ukrainian security think tank, says the upcoming battle for Pokrovsk will be “the climax of the enemy’s offensive operations” this calendar year.
“October and partially November become the moment of maximum tension for both sides in the entire 2024 campaign,” they added.
In its latest update, Ukraine’s military said there were more than 40 Russian attacks in the Pokrovsk direction in the last 24 hours.
Immediately to the south, at the bottom of the bulge, there were a further 45attacks in the Kurakhove direction.
Russia’s defence ministry, meanwhile, claimed they had taken control of the town of Voznesenka, days after taking the nearby Kreminna Balka. Both villages are just north of Kurakhove.
While DeepState, a Ukrainian war monitor with close ties to the Ukrainian defence ministry, said Voznesenka remains in the grey zone, where neither side is in control of the town, they acknowledged that Russia are advancing in that area.
They reported on Thursday that Russian forces had also taken the town of Illinka, directly above Kurakhove.
In the past month, after the fall of Vuhledar, the Russians have also pushed nearly 10 miles towards the settlements of Maksymivka and Trudove. There were 10Russian attacks in that area over the last 24 hours, say the Ukrainian military.
This has created a S-shaped frontline in Donetsk, in which the bulge towards Pokrovsk is followed by a dent around Kurakhove, followed by a secondary bulge.
Concerns abound that the shape of these attacks now leaves Ukrainian forces fighting in Kurakhove at risk of being encircled.
In the city of Kupiansk, in Kharkiv, northeast Ukraine, Kyiv denied that Russian forces had entered its northern outskirts.
Kupiansk was seized by Moscow's forces in the early days of their February 2022 invasion and recaptured by Ukrainian troops in a rapid counter-offensive months later. In recent months, the area has seen an upsurge of activity by Russian forces.
“The alleged presence of Russian troops in the city of Kupiansk is not true,” the Ukrainian military's General Staff wrote on the Telegram messenger.
A Russian-installed official said earlier that Moscow’s forces were gaining a foothold on the outskirts of the city
Further north, in the Russian region of Kursk, around 10,000 North Korean forces are reportedly helping Moscow’s soldiers to push back a Ukrainian attack.
Their effectiveness has come under question for several reasons, not in the least because they lack any combat experience and there remains a language barrier with their Russian counterparts, but US secretary of state Anthony Blinken reported the Pyongyang forces have been heavily-armed.
Last week, Ukrainian and North Korean troops engaged in small-scale fighting for the first time, which amounted to the start of Pyongyang’s direct involvement in the war, Ukraine’s defence minister Rustem Umerov told South Korea’s public broadcaster KBS in an interview.
He added that he anticipates around five North Korean units, each with approximately 3,000 soldiers, will be stationed in the Kursk region.
Kyiv’s forces launched the daring cross-border assault into Kursk on 6 August, capturing hundreds of square miles of territory, but in recent weeks have lost ground on the western side of the attack.
The main city of Sudzha, on the eastern side of the attack, remains in Ukrainian hands. It is believed to be a key target for the Russian forces.
