The situation 1206 – July 5, 2025

• Russian forces recently advanced northeast of Pokrovsk and may attempt to advance further toward Dobropillya as part of a mutually reinforcing effort to envelop Pokrovsk and bypass Ukraine's fortress belt in Donetsk Oblast from the west in the coming months.
• Russian advances west and northwest of Razine most immediately support the envelopment of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad — an operational objective that Russian forces have been pursuing over the last 18 months.
• Further Russian advances toward Dobropillya would indicate that Russian forces are placing a tactical prioritization on advancing west of Ukraine's fortress belt - a series of fortified cities that form the backbone of Ukraine’s defensive positions - and forcing Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the fortress belt under pressure of envelopment rather than conduct a head-on assault against the fortress belt.
• Such an operation would be consistent with Russia's recent tactics and operational concepts designed to advance by leveraging smaller partial envelopments to seize territory instead of attempting rapid, deep operational-level penetrations of Ukraine's defense, which Russian forces currently do not have the means to conduct.
• Ukrainian forces continue to demonstrate their ability to conduct long-range strikes that target Russia's defense industrial base (DIB).
• Ukraine's Western partners to continue to allocate aid to Ukraine and collaborate with the Ukrainian defense industrial base (DIB).
• European intelligence services continue to report that Russia is intensifying its deployment of chemical agents in Ukraine in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to which Russia is a signatory.
• Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Siversk. Russian forces recently advanced near Kupyansk, Siversk, and Pokrovsk.

The full update of the Russian offensive 1206 is available on UNDERSTANDING WAR