Ukrainian troops surround hundreds of Russian infantrymen, restoring hope after a brutal summer and, they say, swaying Trump in their favour
Maxim Tucker
September 25, 2025
The Times
Inside the underground headquarters of Ukraine’s 1st Azov Army Corps, its chief of staff rolls up secret battle plans from the table, then gestures to a large screen with a digital map that details the fight for Pokrovsk in real time. “Here, here and here we cut them off, they are tactically encircled,” says Lieutenant Colonel “Lemko”, gesturing to a point where the Russians broke through to the town’s northeast last month. His map shows hundreds of Russian infantry cut off in three pockets by Ukrainian forces. “Perhaps they can sit there for a month before they die, surrender or withdraw,” he adds. “We are 40,000 against more than 100,000 Russians. We won here with manoeuvre defence and quick, quality decisions.”
At Pokrovsk, Ukraine has withstood President Putin’s summer offensive, and, in places, pushed their enemy back after a year of incremental Russian gains. Buoyed by remarks from President Trump this week that Ukraine can retake all of its territory by force, commanders like Lemko believe it is their work that has helped to change the US president’s mind.
Working through Ukraine’s Delta military command and control application, Lemko shows Ukrainian and Russian positions overlaid on satellite photography. The detail is considerable: he points to where the Russians ploughed through an anti-tank trench and the last known sighting of a Russian sniper.
In the operations room next door, the 1st Army Corps commander, Colonel Denys “Redis” Prokopenko, sits among his officers as they preside over the operation to take out the surrounded Russian infantrymen. The last moments of their enemies’ lives are broadcast back in high definition through reconnaissance drone feeds.
Prokopenko, 34, was captured with the rest of the Azov regiment at Azovstal in 2022, then released later that year during a prisoner swap. His leadership was put to the test when he and his officers were called on to build a corps over summer, then plunged less than half-formed into the battle for Pokrovsk and ordered to take command. In the spring, Putin amassed a huge force here in Donbas for his summer offensive, comprising the Russian 51st and 8th Armies and several marine brigades.
In July that force broke through Ukraine’s defensive lines, causing chaos. The Russian 51st army pushed towards Dobropillia, a logistics hub for Ukraine, while the 8th moved towards Kostiantynivka, a railway hub. Azov was dispatched to Donbas in August. “The situation was
already critical. The enemy had broken through the first line of defence,” Lemko said. “They could have broken through further into the operational–strategic space.”
The Russian attack was intended to seal the region’s fate, sweeping around Pokrovsk and isolating Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, the last two major cities held by Ukraine in the Donetsk region. “There was total chaos. Nobody knew where our positions were, where the enemy was. There was no second or third defence line,” Lemko said. “So during the first week we were gathering all intelligence, all information about what was happening on the battlefield, to have an accurate overview of the situation.”
The corps command took an unusual measure to enforce co-operation between the disparate units, from paratrooper brigades to national guard battalions. The commanders were brought together in one joint HQ and kept there for two weeks until they learned to work together. First, the Ukrainians established a blocking position at the village of Zolotyi Kolodiaz. Then they started striking Russian logistics deep behind enemy lines, between the villages of Ocheretyne and Malynivka. Several thousand Russian infantry — about 15 per cent of the overall force — had advanced beyond drone and artillery support. So the Ukrainians attacked their flanks, getting in behind them.
When the Russians moved artillery, drone pilots and logistics troops up, they were surprised to run into Ukrainian lines and were destroyed. “Once a Ural truck carrying a Russian Giatsint artillery piece drove onto our infantry position. Our infantry was in shock. The Ural was hauling a Russian gun right onto our position,” Lemko said. Not knowing how close the Ukrainians were, the Russians moved to reinforce their breakthrough with marines from their 61st Naval Infantry Brigade but were engaged by Ukrainian forces.
The corps claimed to have killed 3,785 Russian soldiers since reinforcing this sector between August 5 and September 21, wounding 2,135 and capturing 71. They said they had destroyed 28 tanks, 121 artillery pieces and nearly a thousand support vehicles. These claims cannot be independently verified.
Russian military bloggers, however, have expressed alarm at the “catastrophic” situation at this section of the front. Russian units “have found themselves practically encircled” said the popular Russian military blogger Yuri Podolyaka, who has more than three million subscribers on Telegram. Ukraine’s armed forces had flanked the Russians in what he described as a “real, large-scale tactical threat”. “If this happens, the consequences will be felt for a very, very long time,” he added.
The operation has boosted morale, cutting through the mood of despair that prevailed earlier in the summer. At a reconnaissance company command post in Dobropillia, the ground shudders from the impact of four heavy bombs dropped by a Russian jet.
“There’s been an improvement since [Azov] came, they started taking our logistics more seriously,” says Lieutenant “Matsyk”, commander of the 14th Chervona Kalyna Brigade’s reconnaissance company, 2nd battalion. “We worked to block [the Russians] so we don’t give them the opportunity to slip off to the side, and we’re clearing the rear with reconnaissance
groups.” The strategic battle for Pokrovsk is far from over. Its ruins may still fall to the Russians through their slow and grinding war of attrition.
Everywhere the dangers are evident. Engineers are busy draping anti-drone nets above hundreds of miles of road across the Donetsk region. Closer to the front the roads are still exposed, too dangerous to linger on. In the centre of Dobropillia, the whine of a Russian suicide drone can be heard flying low overhead: automatic weapons fire as troops engage it.
For the people of the Donbas, this kind of terror has become routine. Roman, 29, and Alina, 28, childhood sweethearts who finally tied the knot after 13 years together, were celebrating their wedding day on the steps of the bombed-out Kramatorsk regional administration. “We’re already used to it, we’ve always lived here. Slowly, slowly, but still you get used to it. However bad it is, somehow you get used to it. So for now we’re staying, as long as it’s possible,” Roman said.
Anastasia, 27, left her job in a restaurant after a nearby Kramatorsk pizzeria was struck by a missile in 2023, killing 13 people including four children. “I don’t listen to music when I’m walking any more because I should be prepared for anything,” she said. She and her mother, Inna, 51, refuse to leave. Despite the steady stream of refugees deserting once bustling cities, they remain optimistic the Ukrainian lines will hold. “I believe there is still a bright future here. Somebody will rebuild this city again, perhaps we will have even more beautiful cities than they were before. At least I hope so.”
Maxim Tucker was Kyiv correspondent for The Times between 2014 and 2017 and is now an editor on the foreign desk. He has returned to report from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. He advises on grantmaking in the former Soviet countries for the Open Society Foundations and prior to that was Amnesty International’s Campaigner on Ukraine and the South Caucasus. He has also written for The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Newsweek and Politico.