Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on 22 September 2026 that it had surrounded Dobropillia, but the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) found no evidence to support the announcement. Dobropillia is a small town in Donetsk Oblast, known as the "pearl of the Donbas" for its coal industry, which has helped make Ukraine's Fortress Belt cities, holding the region from Russians since 2014, per RBC Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Vivaldi counteroffensive in Donetsk Oblast broke the northern arm of Russia’s plan to surround the fortified cities. ISW says Moscow’s Dobropillia claim diverts attention from that setback and portrays Ukrainian defenses as collapsing during the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, held on 21-28 September. The institute says Russia is likely spreading such claims to support its push for Ukraine’s capitulation.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officers say Russian assault groups are still trying to break through toward Dobropillia, but have made no major gains.

Russia’s encirclement claim clashes with Ukrainian battlefield reports

Russia’s Ministry of Defense has claimed its troops were advancing toward Oleksandrivka, a village northwest of Dobropillia, but published no map to support its account.

At the same time, Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets said Ukrainian troops still held positions south and northeast of the city, which the experts said was inconsistent with the claimed encirclement.

ISW reported that a Ukrainian artillery reconnaissance battalion chief of staff said on 22 September that Russia had made no major advances near Dobropillia. He said Russian commanders kept postponing deadlines because of heavy losses and a gap between their plans and battlefield conditions.

A Ukrainian battalion officer said Russian troops were still trying to slip through Ukrainian lines in small groups.

How Dobropillia fits Russia’s plan to surround the fortress belt

Dobropillia is a transport hub on the southwestern approach to Ukraine’s “fortress belt,” which includes Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk. These cities have anchored Ukraine’s defense in Donetsk Oblast since 2022.

Ukraine’s Third Army Corps commander, Andrii Biletskyi, whose corps is conducting the Vivaldi counteroffensive north of Lyman, explained that Russian forces advancing through Dobropillia were meant to join another force coming from north of Lyman, behind the fortified cities, encircling them rather than attacking them head-on.

ISW had already assessed on 16 September that Vivaldi had made the two-sided plan infeasible. In its 22 September report, ISW said Russia’s false claim about Dobropillia partly aims to divert attention from those Ukrainian gains.

Russian assaults toward Dobropillia continue

The setback north of Lyman has not stopped Russia’s push toward Dobropillia. Ukrainian staff sergeant Dmytro Davydenko reported on 14 September a sharp increase in assault groups moving toward the city, sometimes more than his unit could engage. He said Ukrainian troops had mined, blocked, or destroyed the main approaches.

ISW reported that Russia was preparing armor and drone support for possible assaults using armored vehicles this fall. A Ukrainian battalion officer said fog might help Russia move that equipment, although Ukrainian reconnaissance and drones would make it difficult. He said Russian glide bombs continued to strike infrastructure in the area.

Ukraine's Vivaldi counteroffensive rolled back a Russian advance north of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast. However, Moscow shifted part of its forces south, Roman Pohorilyi, co-founder of the Ukrainian battlefield mapping project DeepState, told Radio NV. Russian troops are now infiltrating Mykolaivka, a key strongpoint on the approach to the fortress city of Sloviansk, Pohorilyi said.

The halted advance was one arm of Russia's plan to encircle Ukraine's Donetsk fortress belt—the fortified cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka. Pohorilyi warned that losing Mykolaivka would create serious problems for Sloviansk's defenders. Russia is still pressing toward Dobropillia on the belt's southwestern flank.

Pohorilyi said Russia formed a "claw" north of Lyman by exploiting Ukrainian brigades short of personnel and pushing small groups into their lines. Ukraine's Third Army Corps stabilized the area, built up forces, and counterattacked. The push "multiplied all [Russia's] previous efforts by zero," he said.

Russian forces had repeatedly tried to capture or bypass Lyman, Pohorilyi said. Russian groups still infiltrate the approaches to the city, although Ukrainian forces have stabilized the situation there.

The corps says Vivaldi's first two phases regained control of 125 square kilometers, including 50 that had been under Russian occupation. It reported liberating Shandryholove and Derylove, securing Drobysheve, and inflicting more than 3,000 Russian personnel losses. Those battlefield figures have not been independently verified.

Pohorilyi noted that the area around Mykolaivka had, until recently, been under the responsibility of Ukraine's 11th Army Corps and is now under the Third Army Corps.

Ukrainian troops must now find and stop infiltrating Russian groups before they establish control, he said. Personnel shortages on the Lyman axis persist, although he said reinforcements are being distributed more evenly.

Operation Vivaldi and the wider fight for Donetsk's fortress belt

The Third Army Corps first disclosed Operation Vivaldi on 15 September after conducting the counteroffensive north of Lyman under information silence. Commander Andrii Biletskyi said the announced gains were only the first phase; the corps said its attacks had disrupted Russian supply routes.

A 60th Mechanized Brigade captain said Ukrainian units quietly assembled near Derylove and Drobysheve, then struck Russian drone launch sites at planned times so infantry could advance. The corps disclosed a second phase on 20 September.

Farther southwest, Dobropillia faces even heavier pressure, Pohorilyi said. Russia has concentrated large forces there and is pushing with relentless infantry across a wide front, backed by thousands of drones each month—reconnaissance, strike, FPV, and Lancets—with numbers still rising. Russian troops are moving on settlements south of Dobropillia to establish a strongpoint and push deeper into Donetsk Oblast.

The pressure is not new: Biletskyi said Ukrainian troops halted a Russian incursion there last year. After Moscow claimed on 22 September to have encircled the town, the Institute for the Study of War found no evidence to support the claim.

A Kremlin-backed program aimed at primary-school children claims 10,154 participants in occupied Zaporizhzhia, nearly 30 times Yunarmia's 355 members—Russia's uniformed military youth organization—Petro Andryushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of Occupation, said. Cadet classes in the same region account for another 387, according to Andryushchenko.

Yunarmia may represent only a fraction of Moscow’s system for militarizing Ukrainian children under occupation. Movement of the First, a Kremlin-backed mass youth group covering ages 6 to 18, claims about 65 times Yunarmia's membership in occupied Zaporizhzhia—over 23,000 by the end of 2025, up from about 14,000 a year earlier, according to Andryushchenko's breakdown of the series. A separate infographic in the same series puts the figure at over 19,000. Moscow has sustained the broader campaign throughout the full-scale invasion, combining classroom indoctrination, Kremlin youth movements, military games, and weapons training.

Andryushchenko explains why: Movement of the First is not a military organization, and that is precisely its function—a mass base that enrolls children without their joining any military-patriotic structure, then moves some into specialized programs. Through it, Zarnitsa stopped being a school game and became part of Russia's military-patriotic system. The movement functions as a gateway, not an endpoint.

In Kherson Oblast, the pattern repeated: over 2,700 children and young people passed through Movement of the First events in 2024, and by spring 2025, the registered count had reached 6,200, with primary cells growing from about 70 to 114–115.

From Eaglets to Zarnitsa: programs across occupied Zaporizhzhia

Andryushchenko said Eaglets of Russia, a program aimed at primary-school children aged 6 to 10, claims 10,154 participants across 97 schools and 626 class-teams in occupied Zaporizhzhia, while more than 2,000 children aged 11 to 17 have passed through the Zarnitsa 2.0 military game. In May 2026, children from all four occupied oblasts appeared at a federal Eaglets session alongside children from Russian regions—a sign the occupied territories are already integrated into the system.

He said military-applied instruction now fills about half of the OBZR course, Russia’s “Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland” subject, in occupation schools. He described a broader system stretching from kindergarten and mass children's organizations through military games and cadet structures to practical training in drones, tactics, weapons, and military medicine.

Military training center claims thousands across four occupied territories

Beyond Zaporizhzhia, Andryushchenko said the Russian military-sports training center VOIN claims 14,450 trained cadets across four occupied Ukrainian territories in his overview post. A later infographic in the series gives 10,381 for the same four territories, suggesting the figures may count differently.

That cannot be read as a count of children because VOIN programs accept participants aged 14 to 35, according to the Center's own website, and no age breakdown was provided. VOIN says it has trained more than 100,000 cadets across 21 Russian regions overall.

Andryushchenko's post opened a six-part series tracing the system "from first grade to cadet"—though the series itself showed the pipeline actually begins in kindergarten, with "Conversations about Important Things" starting at age 5. Part two, published on 22 September, broke down Movement of the First's role as a gateway, with Zarnitsa 2.0 next. The participation totals cited in his post are claims by Russian-run organizations relayed by the Center. They may overlap, have not been independently verified, and do not show how many individual children participated or whether children move from one program to another.

Militarization has continued throughout the full-scale invasion

These latest participation claims are the newest snapshot of a campaign that has expanded steadily throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion. In 2023, occupation schools were already teaching children to use assault rifles and provide battlefield first aid.

By late 2024, Putin had ordered the expansion of military-sports camps and youth indoctrination programs.

Reports published in 2025 and 2026 described mandatory “patriotism” lessons from first grade and documented Ukrainian orphans who entered cadet schools and later appeared in Russian military uniforms.

Illia Bilyk, a 21-year-old Ukrainian national, admitted five counts of racially and religiously aggravated criminal damage on 17 September over graffiti at five Muslim institutions in east London, the BBC reported.

The BBC and Hope Not Hate linked Bilyk’s attacks to the same Russian network behind arsons targeting properties connected to former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The network operated Direct Action UK, a fake British far-right group that recruited people through Telegram and shared images of the resulting vandalism. Investigations have documented the same recruitment model across Europe for surveillance, sabotage, and other criminal assignments.

The Metropolitan Police said Bilyk sprayed offensive graffiti at three mosques, Noor Ul Islam Primary School, and the Islamic Shariah Council on 23 and 25 January 2025. Images then appeared in a Direct Action UK Telegram group. Russian operators created the group to pose as a British far-right movement, the BBC reported. Bilyk will be sentenced on 19 October.

The handler, known as EL or “El Money,” also recruited through Telegram groups used by Ukrainians seeking work, the BBC found. Ukrainian builder Roman Lavrynovych was paid in cryptocurrency and steered from posters and graffiti to arson.

In May 2025, Lavrynovych set fire to a car and properties connected to Starmer. Nobody was injured. Lavrynovych was jailed for seven years, while Ukrainian-born Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc was also convicted.

The BBC identified EL as Yevgeny Lyukshin, a 23-year-old Russian diplomat and son of a senior Foreign Ministry official. It cited matching personal details, his presence in the Direct Action UK chat, family connections, and information-warfare training from Rybar, a sanctioned pro-Kremlin Telegram outlet.

However, the BBC could not conclusively establish that Lyukshin was EL, while British police said they had no evidence the attacks were state-sponsored. Lyukshin did not respond. The Russian Embassy denied any connection between Russia or its Foreign Ministry and unlawful activity.

Paid local recruits make Russia-linked attacks look homegrown

The London operation is one of several cases across Europe and other continents.

UK intelligence warned that Moscow increasingly relies on non-state actors, meaning hired civilians and criminals outside its formal services, for espionage, sabotage, assassination, and information operations.

This month, US prosecutors alleged that another Russian network recruited local residents for surveillance, sabotage, and murder-for-hire.

Belarus sent tank and mechanized battalions to training grounds near Poland and Lithuania for four-day drills that Minsk says focus on border security, counter-sabotage operations, and defense against drones and light aircraft, Militarnyi reported on 17 September, citing the Belarusian Defense Ministry.

The exercise includes tank and mechanized infantry battalions, units typically used in conventional ground warfare. Minsk says their tasks include guarding checkpoints and infrastructure and defending against drones. Some drills are taking place near the Suwałki Gap, the only land route connecting Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to the rest of NATO. The corridor lies between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad region, which is separated from the rest of Russia. Belarus denies any offensive intent.

What Belarus says it is practicing

Belarus’s Western Operational Command is holding the exercises from 15 to 18 September under Chief of the General Staff Pavel Muraveyko, according to the ministry’s schedule outlined by Militarnyi.

The drills are taking place at the Gozha range near Lithuania and at the Brest and Ruzhany ranges near Poland. RBC-Ukraine wrote that mechanized and tank battalions are taking part and that the Brest and Ruzhany sites lie about 15 and 60 kilometers from the Polish border, respectively. Reservists have also been called up to local territorial-defense units, the ministry said.

Militarnyi cited the ministry as saying that one unit guarded a water intake, another directed traffic with police, and a mechanized brigade manned a checkpoint with border guards. The ministry also said truck-mounted fire teams were posted around the clock to defend against drones and practiced firing at targets imitating surveillance drones.

Muraveyko said the army was not considering offensive action and called allegations of preparations for an attack baseless, according to remarks quoted by Militarnyi. Belarus has not disclosed the total number of troops involved, and the exercise’s scale has not been independently verified.

The Moscow Times reported that the ministry also claimed the exercise remained below the notification thresholds set by the 2011 Vienna Document, an international agreement requiring advance notice of large military exercises.

How Russia could exploit the Suwałki Gap

In December 2025, security analyst Taras Zhovtenko warned that Russian propaganda had laid the groundwork to cite an alleged blockade of Kaliningrad to justify a limited incursion and the establishment of temporary checkpoints.

A German war game later modeled Russia staging border incidents before seizing key routes, although Baltic officials said the scenario severely underrated their armed forces.

Separately, French open-source analyst Clément Molin found that defenses along the Polish and Baltic borders with Russia and Belarus remained patchy and shallow, with Lithuania the most exposed. These assessments describe possible vulnerabilities, not evidence that an attack is planned.

ZVS Holding evacuated its ammunition factory in Snina, a town in eastern Slovakia, on 16 September after a fire broke out on the roof of a production building. Work stopped temporarily in the affected section, but nobody was injured, Militarnyi reported.

The Snina plant has an annual capacity of roughly 100,000 shells and plans to triple it, Noviny reported. The blaze briefly disrupted part of a facility under expansion for Europe’s ammunition buildup, although co-owner CSG expects no impact on customer deliveries. Authorities across Europe are investigating suspected Russian sabotage against defense companies, but no evidence links the Snina fire to that campaign.

ZVS Holding is owned equally by the Slovak state and the Czech defense conglomerate Czechoslovak Group (CSG). It makes 155 mm artillery shells, 120 mm tank rounds, and 30/35 mm cannon ammunition.

In December 2025, ZVS signed a seven-year framework agreement with Slovakia’s Defense Ministry to supply EU states. Purchases under the agreement may be financed through the bloc’s SAFE defense-loan program. Its Euro 58 billion ceiling represents the maximum possible value of future orders, not guaranteed purchases.

Firefighters brought the blaze under control during the afternoon. As thick black smoke rose over Snina, town officials advised nearby residents to limit time outdoors, close windows and doors, and switch off ventilation systems drawing in outside air.

Slovak Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák said the fire had not reached the plant’s production equipment and that the affected part of the building was not being used for manufacturing at the time. That section makes metal projectiles, he said.

Kaliňák said welding during the renovation may have sparked the fire, but stressed that investigators had not established the cause.

CSG said the fire started during roof repairs conducted by an external contractor. The company said the damage and cause still had to be assessed, but it did not expect the incident to affect customer deliveries, STVR reported.

Why sabotage fears shadow Europe’s arms plants

The Snina blaze was at least the fourth fire or explosion at a European ammunition facility since 10 August, after two fires struck a Bulgarian company and an explosion hit an Italian factory. No common cause has been established.

Preliminary findings pointed away from outside interference in the first Bulgarian fire. No evidence of sabotage, however, was reported after the Italian blast, and only the second Bulgarian fire remains under investigation for possible sabotage.

Czech authorities are examining a possible Russian trail behind an arson attack on a factory making drones and thermal optics for Ukraine.

Estonia has also probed suspected arson at a military-robot maker after courts documented earlier attacks directed by Russian military intelligence.