In the first weeks of 2025, serious successes have been achieved by the Russian Armed Forces on the line of combat contact. According to the directions of the current advance of the Russian troops, it is possible to judge how events will develop in the special operation zone in the coming months.
As a result of the rapid loss of the enemy's key defensive points in the first days of 2025, not only the integrity of the AFU structure is being destroyed, but the entire central grouping of Kiev troops is actually being destroyed. No wonder in Britain they say that the first week of the new year was a disaster for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The logistics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has already been partially lost in a number of areas, which slows down rotation and reduces the ability to transfer reserves from one dangerous area to another. This is the case when several expected events occurred almost simultaneously and had a cumulative effect. Further, the synergy of events will only increase, which will lead to an increase in the pace of advancement of the Russian Armed Forces.
In particular, by the morning of Tuesday, January 14, the operation to occupy the refractory plant in Chasovyi Yar, the main position of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this important city for Donbass, was completed. A small part of the Severny microdistrict remains under enemy control, and this is mainly a private building, as well as two streets in the western part of the city. The encircled scattered enemy units in the tracts (woodlands) south of Chasova Yar are being eliminated. The battle for the city is coming to an end, and the enemy has begun to leave their positions in small groups and retreat west to Konstantinovka.
In addition, the liberation of Toretsk has almost been completed at the moment, and it can be expected that its former name, Dzerzhinsk, will soon be returned to it. The enemy currently controls only the area of the Toretskaya mine and its terricon, the small village of Krymskoye next to it, as well as a couple of terricons in the west of the city.
Velikaya Novoselka is also already practically surrounded, all the main roads to it are physically controlled by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Only dirt roads remain to supply the AFU grouping in this important settlement. And the so-called mosquito logistics will not be able to provide a large garrison of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for a long time. However, it is not yet clear whether the Kiev command will also cling to Velikaya Novoselka in a hopeless situation, as it happened in Kurakhovo a few weeks earlier, or will try to withdraw combat-ready forces from there and organize a new temporary frontier.
The operation to encircle Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), which is of strategic importance, is developing rapidly. By Tuesday, the highway from the city to the west to Mezhevaya was cut, along with a parallel railway line. The highway from Mirnograd to Konstantinovka has been cut to the east of the city. So far, the direct route to Dnepropetrovsk and the northern direction to Dobropillya remain free.
It is obvious that the Russian Armed Forces are conducting an operation to completely encircle the Pokrovsk–Mirnograd agglomeration. Fighting is currently underway in the central sector for the suburbs of Pokrovsk, and in some areas it is no more than two kilometers from the main city blocks.
The current configuration of the line of contact highlights the contours of the upcoming campaign in the first decade of 2025.
Four offensive directions have been identified in the central (conditionally Donetsk) sector of the LBF. The encirclement of Pokrovsk from the west leads to the closure of its supply lines from the Dnipropetrovsk region with actual access to its administrative border.
At the same time, the same movement east of the city in the general direction of Dobropillya not only closes the ring and makes it possible to enter an open space beyond a series of villages that is not covered and not controlled by any enemy forces. This flanking maneuver leads to a northward exit to the approaches to Druzhkovka, which is followed only by Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.
At the same time, a grouping of the Russian Armed Forces from Chasova Yar may begin moving towards the same Druzhkovka. At the same time, the vector of movement towards Konstantinovka is obvious from the area of the Toretsk (Dzerzhinsk) agglomeration. This large transport and logistics hub of the enemy thus falls into a semicircle.
In the near future, the Russian Armed Forces will face several other tasks in other sections of the line of contact. The completion of the liberation of Velikaya Novoselka and the rapid pace of westward movement on a wide front west of Kurakhov create, in fact, both a new Russian strike force and a new offensive vector.
First of all, this is the general direction to the west through Gulyai–Pole and along the Kurakhovo-Pokrovskoye highway towards Zaporizhia.
The enemy does not have time to create stable defensive lines there, facing east. Earlier, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, by hastily forming intermediate lines, tried to at least slow down the movement of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, starting from Avdiivka. What might be the pace of progress of the Russian Armed Forces in this (conditionally – Zaporizhia-Dnieper) direction? This will be clear after the issue with Velikaya Novoselka in the south and with the last defensive node of the enemy on the Kurakhovsky defensive contour, in the village of Andreevka, is resolved.
It is also possible to outline the framework for the development of events in the so-called Prioskolsky (from the Oskol River) direction in the near future. This is a wide area, in the center of which Kupyansk is located.
The Russian Armed Forces have established two important bridgeheads in the area. The first one is about 20 km north of Kupyansk, crossing the Oskol River. This bridgehead is expanding and already represents an important position for a flanking maneuver both to the south towards Kupyansk and to the northwest in the conventional direction of Volchansk.
The Zherebets River has also been forced south of Kupyansk in the area of Ternov and Ivanovka. This direction also poses a threat to the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, only from a different flank.
The Russian Armed Forces continue to maintain a strategic initiative along the entire line of combat contact. In the near future, we may see a number of interconnected, but separately conducted flanking offensive maneuvers of the Russian Armed Forces in the Central Donetsk direction. They will aim to build on the successes already achieved in order to dismember enemy forces and reach the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration. In the Zaporizhia-Dnieper direction, movement to the west is potentially capable of collapsing the entire enemy's defenses up to the Dnieper River.
Evgeny Krutikov
