Ukraine makes gains near Dobropillya amid rapid push
On Monday, Ukrainian military observer Konstantin Mashovets said Ukraine’s Armed Forces had cleared Zapovedne and Dorozhne of Russian troops.
Geolocated footage from August 14 and 18 indicated Ukrainian troops halted a Russian advance along a tree line southwest of Petrovka. Footage from August 17 and 18 shows a Ukrainian flag in Zolotyi Kolodets. ISW had previously not marked these settlements as areas of Russian advances on its maps due to a lack of geolocated evidence of Russian presence in either Petrivka or Zolotyi Kolodyaz. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War have observed signs that Russian forces are struggling to turn an initial tactical penetration near Dobropillya into a broader operational breakthrough.
Colonel Viktor Tregubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Dnipro Group of Forces, said on August 18 that Ukrainian troops crushed a Russian salient on the Dobropillya axis, cutting infiltration elements off from main forces and likely depriving them of the ability to supply and reinforce at the scale needed to expand those infiltrations.
Mashovets said units of Russia’s 150th Motorized Rifle Division are trying to bypass Volodymirivka from the east to threaten the flank of Ukrainian forces that currently threaten elements of Russia’s 51st Army holding a narrow breach toward Dobropillya between Zapovidne and Novotoretske.
However, Mashovets added that Ukrainian forces advancing on the western side of the breach are moving faster than elements of Russia’s 8th Army east of Volodymirivka. He noted that the 5th, 110th and 132nd Motorized Rifle Brigades operating in the breach are being “fragmented” in their efforts to support the breakthrough and, as a result, can hold only a 2.5-kilometer-wide strip in the breach zone.
A Russian military blogger recently warned the Russian breakthrough to the east and northeast of Dobropillya is too narrow relative to its depth and therefore vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks and interdiction. Russian military bloggers are also discussing the Rodynske axis more often than Dobropillya, suggesting difficulties reinforcing the initial breakthrough are now reflected in Russian information-space reporting on the Pokrovsk direction.