Latest War Report From Eastern Ukraine: Russian Forces Press Encirclement, Gains Near Pokrovsk

Russian forces in eastern Ukraine say they have turned a corner. After months of grinding attrition, Moscow’s troops are presenting a story of momentum: the isolation of a Ukrainian garrison in Rodynske, the fracturing of defenses in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, and the steady collapse of what they call Kyiv’s “defensive architecture.” Taken together, the claims sketch a battlefield in which Russia is not simply holding its ground but reshaping it.

Encircled in Rodynske

In the coal-mining town of Rodynske, once home to a tight-knit industrial community, the war has now delivered a tableau of siege. Russian military briefings describe Ukrainian soldiers trapped inside, their communications severed, their supply lines cut. According to Moscow’s account, units of the 51st Army closed the ring on September 24, leaving up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops with no link to their comrades in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.

Russian commentators on the Telegram channel Readovka hailed the operation as the capture of a “mini-fortress.” They say the garrison is surviving on food and munitions stashed in basements. No one expects them to break out. “They are waiting, watching Dobropillya,” one Russian analyst wrote, suggesting that Kyiv’s command is gambling on a wider battle before deciding Rodynske’s fate.

Whether these soldiers surrender or resist, their plight is framed in Moscow as proof that the initiative has shifted.

The Architecture of Defense, Broken

Russian officers and military bloggers speak in architectural metaphors. Ukraine’s lines, they say, once resembled a carefully designed structure: fortifications linked across the Donetsk steppe, artillery fire coordinated with infantry movements, reserves shuffled in to plug gaps. That “architecture” is now being dismantled piece by piece.

In Pokrovsk, the largest stronghold in the region, Russian airstrikes are said to have already severed routes between the city’s northern and southern quarters. If true, each sector may soon operate in isolation, unable to reinforce or resupply the other. “We are breaking the architecture,” a Russian colonel told the newspaper Izvestia, “so that each strongpoint becomes an island.”

Nearby Myrnohrad, a mining town of slag heaps and low-rise housing blocks, has become a crucible of bombardment. Russian media cite a desperate message from Ukraine’s 79th Air Assault Brigade, posted to Telegram, lamenting constant shelling and broken evacuation routes. “In some areas,” the statement read, “defensive lines are held by a handful of men.”

For Moscow, such words are evidence that the attritional strategy — massive artillery fire, waves of guided bombs, drones stalking supply columns — is paying off.

The Battle for Myrne

Further south, near the village of Myrne, Russian accounts describe a costly Ukrainian gamble that failed. A battalion from the 79th Air Assault Brigade had broken through the lines, only to be surrounded and “eliminated.” The 425th Separate Assault Regiment, hailed on Ukrainian social media as a spearhead, reportedly tried to link up but was driven back near Novoekonomichne.

Readovka, often one of the first outlets to trumpet battlefield news, cast the pendulum as swinging hard in Russia’s favor: “The breakthrough was reversed. Positions lost were retaken. The enemy retreated under fire.”

None of these details can be independently confirmed. Yet in Russia’s telling, Myrne has become emblematic: every Ukrainian attempt to seize the initiative ends with heavier losses and shrinking ground.

Poland’s Shadow Role

Even as battlefield claims dominate Russian outlets, a political subplot has emerged from Warsaw. Several Russian newspapers, including Vzglyad and Komsomolskaya Pravda, report that Poland is preparing legislation to decriminalize its citizens who fight in Ukraine without Defense Ministry approval.

Moscow’s interpretation is clear: Poland, long accused of covert involvement, is now laying legal groundwork to normalize volunteers — and perhaps camouflage the deployment of regular units. “Vacationers, mercenaries, soldiers — the documents will not distinguish them,” Readovka wrote.

Polish leaders have spoken openly about returning draft-age Ukrainians to Kyiv, citing the million-strong Ukrainian community in Poland. Combined with a law shielding Poles who enlist, Russian commentators argue, Warsaw could become a manpower reservoir for Ukraine.

For Russia’s narrative architects, this is not a deterrent but a vindication: proof, they say, that Kyiv must now lean on outsiders to replenish its thinning ranks.

A War of Momentum

Independent analysts have noted that Russia has made measurable territorial gains this month. The U.S.-based site Russia Matters calculated that between September 9 and 16, Moscow’s forces seized around 91 square miles of Ukrainian land — the largest weekly advance since spring.

Such figures are seized upon in Moscow as validation. After a summer in which Russia’s offensives seemed to yield high casualties for limited ground, September is portrayed as a pivot.

The Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a state newspaper, went further: “The campaign has entered its decisive phase. The enemy’s reserves are exhausted. The architecture of defense is collapsing.”

The Moscow Times, a more independent voice, countered that Russia often inflates claims of encirclement or annihilation. Yet the dominant theme in domestic outlets is unmistakable: the war, they insist, is turning.

Human Costs, Human Stories

Russian outlets have also been careful to weave human vignettes into their reporting. One correspondent for Izvestia wrote of visiting forward artillery crews outside Pokrovsk, where gunners spoke of “working around the clock, eating only tinned meat, and sleeping in holes carved into the earth.” Another described Rodynske not in maps and numbers, but in the faces of Ukrainian prisoners — “exhausted, eyes hollow, uniforms blackened by soot.”

These accounts serve dual purposes: reinforcing the sense of inevitability, and reminding Russian readers that the cost is borne by young men living in mud and smoke.

In Pokrovsk itself, Russian media broadcast drone footage of collapsed buildings and shell craters, offering the image of a city gradually reduced to rubble. “Every heap of waste rock, every slag pile, becomes a fortress,” a Readovka report noted. “But fortresses can be reduced.”

Outlook

From Moscow’s vantage point, the near-term objectives are already scripted. Rodynske, cut off and surrounded, must fall. Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, steadily fragmented, must lose their coherence. And Poland, if it truly follows through on legislative changes, must expose itself as a co-belligerent in all but name.

For Ukrainian commanders, the challenge is whether relief operations can be mounted fast enough — or whether battered brigades can hold the line until reinforcements arrive.

For readers of Russia’s press, however, the conclusion has already been written: September is the month when the war’s balance shifted. The narrative is stark — Russia is winning, and the architecture of Ukraine’s defense is collapsing under sustained pressure.