President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced a reinforcement of Ukrainian positions in Donetsk Oblast. This comes amid a Russian offensive against the fortress cities that have defended the region since 2014. Zelenskyy announced the decision after a meeting with Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his army to seize the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by the end of this year, Zelenskyy said earlier. This comes amid plans in Russia to mobilize 300,000 Russians in the autumn, UNIAN reports.

After speaking with the military and hearing General Staff reports, Zelenskyy said he, Drapatyi, and Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara determined the next steps to strengthen Ukrainian positions. Two renewed groupings in Donetsk Oblast will be reinforced.

Two Azov commanders take the groupings

The groupings will be led by Hero of Ukraine Denys Prokopenko and Hero of Ukraine Andrii Biletskyi, Zelenskyy said. Prokopenko commands the 1st Azov Corps of the National Guard and led the defense of Mariupol in 2022. Biletskyi founded the Azov movement in 2014 and now commands the 3rd Army Corps.

Prepare for the worst

Robert “Madiar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, has commented on the decision.

“This is Smart War. Total synchronization with the Unmanned Systems Forces grouping, the shortest possible ‘sensor-to-shooter’ chain,” he said, adding that Russian forces should prepare for the worst possible consequences.

Analysts urged the move before it came

Earlier, two experts had also called for such a decision: Oleksandr Kovalenko of Information Resistance and Yurii Butusov, a drone company commander in the National Guard’s Khartia Corps.

"The eastern flank of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration is taking on an increasingly threatening character," said Kovalenko, suggesting Andrii Biletskyi's 3rd Army Corps, often described as one of the most capable formations in Ukraine's forces, can be used to stop the catastrophe.

Yurii Butusov said that if Ukraine's forces retreat from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, it could ultimately lead to the loss of the Donbas.

A Ukrainian court sentenced three Russian agents to 15 years each for guiding Russian strikes on Donetsk Oblast, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on 26 August. Each had been recruited to mark Ukrainian military sites or civilian targets in the east, and counterintelligence exposed them between spring 2025 and March this year. The court found all three guilty of treason committed under martial law. The SBU did not name the court or say which specific strikes the men enabled.

The informer inside the armor repair base

One of the convicted men worked at a Defense Forces repair base, and the SBU detained him in the Kramatorsk sector in April 2025. Russian services noticed him through his brother, who lives in Russia and works for the Federal Security Service (FSB), the investigation established. Recruitment through relatives in Russia or the occupied territories is a method Ukrainian counterintelligence has documented before, including inside a marine brigade on the active front.

During his own shifts at the defense enterprise, he recorded the geolocations of repair shops used to restore heavy armored vehicles for Ukraine's Armed Forces. He tried to pass the photographs and building coordinates to his Russian handler through an anonymous chat in a messenger.

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The Dobropillia man who aimed 1.5-ton bombs near Pokrovsk

The second man was an unemployed resident of Dobropillia and an agent of Russian military intelligence, which noticed him through anti-Ukrainian comments in Telegram channel chats, the SBU said. The agency's counterintelligence detained him near Pokrovsk in March this year. Investigators established that he directed 1.5-ton guided aerial bombs at fortified areas and at artillery positions that keep Russian assault groups under fire control on the Pokrovsk axis. Russian forces have leaned more heavily on heavy glide bombs across this stretch of front this year, hitting fortifications and reducing towns to rubble their infantry then uses as cover.

The Kostiantynivka resident who marked his own city

The third man, recruited by the FSB, lived in Kostiantynivka, and SBU military counterintelligence exposed him in August 2025, according to the report. He approached Russian services through pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and offered them his help.

He directed Russian guided aerial bombs and small first-person-view drones at the civilian infrastructure of the front-line city, according to the case materials. He also tracked the positions of Ukrainian drone units carrying out combat tasks on the Kramatorsk axis. Russian strikes on that axis have repeatedly hit residential blocks, with prosecutors opening war-crimes investigations.