Vladimir Putin wants you to believe the fortress belt of Donetsk has cracked. In a highly staged meeting on July 3, 2026, alongside Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Putin triumphantly claimed that Russian forces had fully captured the strategically vital city of Kostyantynivka. He hailed it as the definitive milestone that opens the door to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
There is just one problem. It isn't true.
Step away from the Kremlin's microphone and look at the ground reality. The battle for Kostyantynivka is raging with brutal intensity. Ukrainian forces haven't retreated. Instead, they are locked in fierce street battles, systematically hunting down the small Russian units that have managed to slip past the city limits. President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately hit back at Moscow's narrative, warning that this aggressive disinformation campaign is merely a cover. Russia is masking severe tactical friction while quietly preparing another massive missile and drone strike against Ukraine's cities.
The real situation in the Donbas reveals a theater of war where territorial claims are cheap, but the actual cost of advancing has skyrocketed to unsustainable levels.
The Disinformation Pincer and the Reality on the Ground
Moscow needs a victory badly. In late June 2026, state-run pollster VTsIOM recorded a rare 3.5% drop in Putin’s approval rating. At the same time, severe domestic gasoline shortages have caused long lines at Rosneft stations across places like Chita and forced Novorossiysk to briefly suspend fuel sales. To shift the narrative, the Kremlin did what it always does. It manufactured a triumph.
Ukrainian military officials and independent open-source intelligence groups like DeepState paint a vastly different picture of the city. Russian troops have indeed intensified their spring-summer offensive. They hit the southwestern edge of Kostyantynivka via the H-20 highway, relying on months of creeping infiltration missions. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian forces maintain a presence or have infiltrated roughly 36.98% of the city.
But holding a presence is not the same as holding a city.
Ukrainian military units inside the town have been publishing direct video evidence of their ongoing counter-sabotage operations. They are hunting small groups of Russian soldiers—estimated to number between 100 and 250 men—who are isolated inside urban blocks without enduring positions. The 24th Mechanized Brigade has gone as far as stringing massive anti-drone nets across critical resupply roads, turning the city into a meat grinder for Russian infantry.
The Devastating Math of the Creeping Offensive
If you look closely at the data from June 2026, Russia’s strategy looks less like a triumphant march and more like a mathematical disaster.
During June, Russian forces managed to seize or infiltrate about 30.42 square kilometers of total territory across the theater. That is a microscopic crawl of roughly one square kilometer per day. To put that in perspective, back in June 2025, they were taking over 16 square kilometers a day.
The human and material price tag for this slowing momentum is staggering. According to Ukrainian General Staff reports, Russia suffered 39,490 casualties in June alone. Break that down, and Moscow is burning through roughly 1,298 soldiers for every single square kilometer it infiltrates.
The equipment losses are equally brutal. Russia lost 12,867 fuel vehicles and tanks in June 2026. That is a near four-fold increase compared to the same period last year. This explains why Putin is furious about Ukraine’s intermediate- and long-range strike campaigns, which hit 303 targets in occupied territories and Russian border towns last month alone. Recent drone strikes on an electrical substation at the Michurinskaya Thermal Power Plant in Belgorod and an oil terminal in St. Petersburg have squeezed Russia's logistics to a breaking point.
Zelensky Warns of the Next Aerial Assault
With the ground campaign stalled in bloody urban warfare, Kyiv is bracing for the Kremlin's predictable response. Zelensky has openly warned allies that fresh intelligence points to a massive, coordinated aerial assault targeting Ukrainian infrastructure and cities.
We saw the deadly blueprint for this just days ago. A devastating strike on Kyiv on July 2 left at least 30 people dead. Russia has begun using its newer medium-range ballistic missiles alongside hundreds of cheap drones to saturate Ukrainian air defenses.
When Putin threatens a wider "security zone" in response to Ukrainian infrastructure strikes, he is telegraphing his intent. He can't take Kostyantynivka cleanly on the ground, so he intends to flatten Ukrainian logistical nodes from the air. This is exactly why Zelensky is cutting international trips short and demanding that Western allies stop dragging their feet on delivering promised anti-ballistic missile systems. Every week an air defense battery sits in a warehouse is a week a Ukrainian city remains exposed.
What Happens Next in the Donbas
Don't expect the fighting around the fortress belt to cool down. If you are tracking this conflict, you need to watch three specific operational indicators over the coming weeks.
First, watch the H-20 highway supply lines. If the Ukrainian 24th Mechanized Brigade can keep the drone nets intact and maintain artillery dominance over this corridor, the Russian units inside southwestern Kostyantynivka will starve out or be destroyed.
Second, monitor the domestic fuel crisis inside Russia. If Ukraine’s drone strikes continue to force regional gas stations to halt sales, the Kremlin's ability to supply heavy armored units on the front lines will degrade further, dropping their daily advance rate below the current one-kilometer mark.
Finally, ignore the premature victory declarations coming out of Moscow. The battle for the Donbas is a war of attrition, not a race for flags. True control over Kostyantynivka is measured by sustainable positions and stable supply lines, neither of which Russia possesses right now.
