Dobropillya: Russia Officially Confirms a New Pocket
The Russian Ministry of Defence announced on Monday that the Centre group has completed the encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Dobropillya, and that the offensive is now continuing towards the village of Oleksandrivka north of the town.
Among the trapped units, the ministry lists the 4th and 15th National Guard brigades as well as the 425th separate assault regiment “Skala” — a regiment that is in practice infantry, but with some of the quality of a special forces unit, originally built up under General Syrsky’s leadership and still regarded as an elite force.
The ministry further stated that several Ukrainian breakout attempts have been repelled, and that at least 50 Ukrainian soldiers have been “neutralised” in the past 24 hours alone.
Unlike the sudden and surprising announcement of the fall of Svyatogorsk west of Lyman a few weeks ago, this announcement builds on and confirms what Russian military bloggers and analysis channels have been reporting for a long time.
There is little reason to doubt that a significant Ukrainian force is indeed encircled in Dobropillya. The town will probably fall, unless the Ukrainians can pull off a miracle and break through the pocket — which appears highly unlikely.
Dobropillya is the last town in western Donbass; beyond it lie open fields and small villages for tens of kilometres in every direction. Combined with Russian control over Zolotoy Kolodez and Kolodezi further east, the town’s fall would put Russia in an ideal position to outflank the entire Slavyansk conurbation from the west.
It is not just another pocket — it is another step towards the largest pocket of the entire war so far: one that could eventually envelop Slavyansk and Kramatorsk and trap tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.
Zaporozhye: A Ukrainian Commander Says It Out Loud — Zaporozhye City Could Be Attacked This Winter
A far more worrying piece of information comes from the Ukrainian side itself: the commander of Ukraine’s 1st separate assault regiment, call sign “Perun” (after the Slavic god of war), has stated that the situation in the Zaporozhye region is deteriorating rapidly.
He is evidently referring to Orekhov, which the Russians have encircled and from which the Ukrainians apparently are unable to withdraw — fighting there is intense, and the Russians probably control most of the town, with remaining Ukrainian resistance concentrated in the northern part.
According to the commander, General Teplinsky’s Dnepr group, which has recaptured Stepnogorsk and partly Plavni and Primorskoye on the east bank of the Dnepr river south of Zaporozhye city, will begin infiltrating northwards towards the city itself once Orekhov falls — through continuous built-up areas all the way to the city’s outskirts.
He says there is a real, high probability that Russian infantry groups will penetrate Zaporozhye city itself during the winter, using infiltration tactics in the dense coastal urban sprawl.
Should that happen, it would boost Russian morale considerably and shock the West — Zaporozhye is a city that in Soviet times had over a million inhabitants, ten times larger and economically far more important than Konstantinovka.
Such an assault would be impossible to conceal or explain away, and would at a stroke reduce all narratives of Ukrainian initiative to dust.
The Massive Strike: A Foretaste of What Is Coming
On Sunday night Russia carried out yet another large combined drone and missile strike on Ukraine — large, but not the largest so far. It bore the hallmarks of preparation for an even more powerful strike still to come, probably aimed primarily at the energy system.
While the strike was under way, large numbers of Russian Gerbera reconnaissance drones were active over Kyiv and central and western Ukraine — areas that were not the main targets that night. This suggests that part of the purpose was to obtain detailed reconnaissance for the really big strike to come, while inflicting damage with the strike itself.
Among the confirmed targets: the Kremenchuk refinery — Ukraine’s largest — was hit hard, probably with Banderol and Dante cruise missiles; a factory in the same city, officially a sugar and tobacco factory, but according to the Russians also used to produce small-arms equipment for the Ukrainian military; another Firepoint factory in Kyiv producing parts for the Flamingo missile; a fuel depot in the Dnepropetrovsk region; and the steelworks in Kryvyi Rih — Zelensky’s home town.
Several sources now confirm that Ukraine’s huge iron, steel and metallurgical industry has in practice come to a complete halt — an industry that was once the backbone of the country’s economy.
The Comparison That Matters: Moscow Survived, Ukraine Suffers
It is worth comparing this medium-sized Russian strike with what the Ukrainians achieved in their largest strike to date, Sunday’s attack on Moscow. Some damage to the Moscow refinery, possibly put completely out of action according to an anonymous Reuters source — but Russia will repair it quickly.
A warehouse in the Moscow region destroyed. Beyond that, most of Russia sailed through Sunday virtually untouched. The contrast is striking: even a Russian strike of medium strength inflicts damage on Ukraine of an entirely different order than the Ukrainians’ most powerful strike so far managed to inflict on Russia.
Trump, Zelensky and the Meeting in Dublin With Ratcliffe
Trump continues to blame the Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries for the global diesel crisis, and repeatedly demands a mutual ceasefire in the energy war.
Peskov today repeated Russia’s answer: if Ukraine really wants any kind of ceasefire, it knows what is required — it has already been explained repeatedly, and it is set out in the Anchorage agreements: withdrawal from Donbass, and increasingly clear signals suggest that it now also applies to Zaporozhye and Kherson.
Zelensky, for his part, says he would gladly accept an energy ceasefire — provided Russia first stops all attacks on Ukrainian energy and “civilian” infrastructure, a category he himself would define.
In practice he is asking Russia to end the entire air war, which Russia will never accept. According to figures circulating, last night Ukraine managed to shoot down only a single Russian missile — a subsonic Kalibr cruise missile fired from a Russian corvette in the Black Sea. Ukrainian air defence in practice no longer exists.
The most interesting news, however, is Zelensky’s meeting with CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Dublin, on his way to New York for the UN General Assembly.
It is worth noting who is really running the drone offensive against Russian refineries: it is not Zelensky himself, but Ratcliffe and the CIA, who supply targeting data and probably also technology and Starlink connectivity for the Ukrainian drones — something the New York Times, the Washington Post and recently the Financial Times have all confirmed.
When Trump asks Zelensky to stop the attacks, he is in reality asking a man who is not in full control of his own offensive. Most likely, Ratcliffe in Dublin coached Zelensky on how he should present the situation to Trump in New York — to ensure continued US pressure on Russia, with the blame for everything that goes wrong placed on Putin.
France: “Vertigo” in the Élysée Palace While the People Suffer Fuel Shortages
While the Western press has avoided the subject, a serious fuel crisis is now spreading in France.
Macron insists the country “stands shoulder to shoulder” with Ukraine, while some of his own officials are calling for a national economic mobilisation in which the priority — literally stated — is to maintain military supplies to Ukraine rather than to handle the crisis for French citizens.
A French official who took part in a crisis briefing at the Élysée Palace on the overall global situation — the Middle East, France, Ukraine — described leaving the meeting with a feeling of “vertigo”, saying he had never experienced a time when the situation was so serious and dangerous all at once.
Macron is now asking Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission to come up immediately with a plan to lower energy prices in Europe — without himself hinting at what that plan should contain.
The obvious answer — postponing the decision to stop all imports of Russian energy from January, and reopening the one remaining intact Nord Stream pipeline — is not something either Macron or von der Leyen appears to be considering.
Conclusion: Vertigo Will Soon Become Something Far Worse
The situation the French official described as dizzying is only the beginning. With Dobropillya officially encircled, a Ukrainian commander himself warning that Zaporozhye city could be attacked this winter, and a Russian energy strike of historic dimensions still to come, the symptoms awaiting those who take part in Macron’s crisis meetings are likely to be orders of magnitude worse than dizziness.
