The recent change in the commander of the Donetsk Group of Forces in eastern Ukraine following Russian advances in the region has raised concerns about the current situation on Ukraine’s eastern front.
Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskiy has been appointed to head the operational-tactical group, replacing Gen. Oleksandr Lutsenko. The move comes after Lutsenko was heavily criticized for failing to halt recent Russian advances toward the key city of Pokrovsk.
Russian forces were spotted just three kilometers from the city, according to Ukrainian mapping service DeepState. Pokrovsk has become the scene of some of the heaviest fighting on the eastern front in months as Russia attempts to close in on it.
About 11 miles from Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Its capture by Russian forces would mark a major setback for Ukraine and would compound the country’s struggle to reverse the trend as Russian troops exert severe pressure on the eastern front lines.
It also heightens anxiety within the Ukrainian military over the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency in the United States, a major source of military aid to Kyiv. The conflict, now in its fourth year, is likely to face uncertainties over continued U.S. support.
Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that Moscow’s forces had begun deploying “significant numbers” of North Korean troops in their efforts to push the Ukrainian military out of Russia’s Kursk region.
Since Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region in August, the country has retained control of some settlements. Zelensky reported preliminary evidence that the Russians have begun using North Korean soldiers in assaults, with losses among those soldiers already “significant.” He also mentioned that Ukraine has information about the possible use of North Korean soldiers along other parts of the front. This involvement of foreign soldiers in the conflict raises new questions about the developments and highlights the broader international stakes of this conflict.