By Nick Paton Walsh, Victoria Butenko, Daria Tarasova-Markina, NCS
(NCS) — It is the destiny of simply one town, over a yr, however gives a uncommon perception into Russia’s ill-fated warfare of alternative.
The slow and expensive infiltration of Kostyantynivka, key to Moscow’s advance in Ukraine’s japanese Donbas and claimed as occupied by the Russian protection ministry on July 3, lays naked the persistence of the Kremlin’s forces and the devastating casualties they may tolerate to acquire even the smallest of targets.
On July 3, the Ministry of Defense posted a collection of movies of Russian troops at varied factors inside the town’s heart, waving Russian flags, to bolster its assertion that they had taken the town. The false claim – contradicted by current movies, testimony from Ukrainian troops, and unbiased mapping of the frontlines – was one of a number of made in previous months by Russia’s leaders, searching for to counsel their battlefield progress was better than it’s, to maybe persuade their home viewers, or counterparts in the White House, that their army marketing campaign had not stalled.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky swiftly seized on the falsehood, and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to satisfy with him in the town to speak peace, if certainly it was underneath Moscow’s management.
NCS, which has reported in or close to Kostyantynivka twice over the previous yr, has used geolocated movies and testimony, to point out the horrific price and slow pace of the Russian advances that led as much as the false claim of the town’s capture. The town’s destiny exposes each the dogged, relentless nature of Moscow’s assault, and the comparatively minute nature of the victories it claim, even when falsely.
July 29, 2025
Mapping by the unbiased Ukrainian analysts Deep State reveals Russian forces outdoors the town, attempting to push in. The highway into the town is already lined with fishing nets, to guard visitors from Russian assault drones. Cars safely drive into town and the market, in its heart, stays busy, regardless of the occasional risk of drones.
A NCS group that visited in July final yr, discovered streets bustling with civilians, though some have been reluctant to be filmed, maybe fearing future Russian occupation and being sanctioned for “cooperating” with Western media.
November 2025
By the first winter months, the map reveals the so-called grey zone of disputed territory edging nearer to the town heart. Russia’s assault with airstrikes had escalated. Videos posted by Ukrainian forces present condominium blocks in the town’s southwest in flames.
And a Russian drone captures the harm attributable to an airstrike, only a few streets away.
But the Ukrainians are nonetheless confidently inside the town heart, with the General Staff posting a video of one officer casually standing in Victory Square in November.
Russian footage posted from that point reveals what seems to be their infantry’s level of view from inside an condominium complicated courtyard, off the town’s Gromov Street, on the southwestern edges once more.
January 2026
It is in the latter days of the yr that Russia seems to take its largest steps ahead, recorded by Deep State in the first week of 2026. The grey zone has reached the town and two separate Russian prongs edge nearer to its foremost entry roads.
Two key components inform the extent of Moscow’s progress. The vary of assault drones – both the tiny First-Person View drones that concentrate on people or autos, or the larger-payload machines that hit buildings – grows month-to-month, slowly placing the secure house round Kostyantynivka at a better distance and complicating its protection by Ukraine. More considerably, right now Western officers started to echo Ukrainian claims that Russia was experiencing as much as 35,000 useless or wounded on the battlefield each month.
This staggering determine – an obvious end result of each a Ukrainian mandate to kill as many troopers as doable with its drones and the continued use of brutal “wave” assault ways by Moscow – exposes the possible human price of Russia’s small advances round Kostyantynivka.
The movies posted in January present, nonetheless, that Kyiv’s forces are very a lot nonetheless in the heart, close to the embattled railway station, at the finish of the month.
By February, white phosphorus, a horrific munition whose use in warfare over residential areas is taken into account unlawful in humanitarian regulation, rains down over the condominium blocks of the southwest, suggesting the outskirts are residence to the heaviest fight.
All the similar, the Ukrainians publish movies exhibiting they’re nonetheless in the central-south space of the town.
It is evident by this stage that a lot of the civilian inhabitants has left and the town is slowly being lowered to rubble. A video posted in April reveals that the place Ukrainian troops stood casually in November has been lowered to the skeletal stays of buildings and ruins, elevating the query of the financial worth of the areas Russia fights for.
May 2026
NCS skilled the change in Russian drone attain firsthand in May, in a grueling five-hour return journey on foot alongside the foremost entrance highway into Kostyantynivka, which a yr earlier was safely accessible underneath the cowl of fishing nets. By May, the nets remained however the highway was plagued by the charred remnants of vehicles, struck by drones, and automatic robots used to ship provides to the entrance line.
The five-kilometer (3.1-mile) stroll down what had turn out to be often called the “Road of Life,” from the subsequent foremost town of Druzhkivka, to the outskirts of Kostyantynivka, was largely carried out on foot, a journey throughout which Ukrainian troops needed to always duck into the foliage and hope the Russian assault drones overhead would cross them by. Vehicles on the highway had turn out to be targets and the group handed the burned-out automotive the place an officer from the unit was killed simply days earlier.
The elevated peril on the highway, regardless of Ukrainian troops nonetheless being in the town’s heart, mirrored Russian drones having developed better vary over the previous few months and the technological advances on each side that always reconfigure the battlefield. The map reveals the grey zone now deep inside the town and Russian forces actually inside its southwest.
July 2026
Two months later, the Russian army would claim the town was theirs and publish movies in obvious proof to that impact. However, it’s clear on the July 3 map that they nonetheless must exert management over important elements of it.
Per week after the claimed capture, Ukraine’s nineteenth Army Corps posted a video on Telegram of its drones concentrating on Russian forces in the rubble of the metropolis, killing one “occupier.” The publish says: “The enemy paints victories on screens, but in practice, they are destroyed by our units. The city stands. Defense continues.”
This is the lesson of Kostyantynivka: Russia might slowly be taking it, at enormous price. But it covers a mere 66 sq. kilometers (25.5 sq. miles), whereas Russia’s territory quantities to 17 million sq. kilometers (6.6 million sq. miles).
It is unclear precisely what number of Russian or Ukrainian lives have been misplaced to the battle. But photos of the town present its discount to rubble.
The town has some strategic significance, in that its capture would allow Moscow’s forces to edge nearer to the final foremost inhabitants facilities of the Donbas area that Putin so covets – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. But the capture of each these cities is more likely to contain a equally grotesque and prolonged battle, placing a good optimistic evaluation of attaining this key Moscow warfare objective at the very least a yr away.
A yr of horrific violence in Kostyantynivka eats at the weak spot at the coronary heart of Putin’s war-plan: how lengthy can he maintain Russian public confidence in a battle the place the smallest achievements have to be falsely claimed and in actuality stay out of attain?
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