Today, there are important updates from the Pokrovsk direction, Donetsk Oblast.

Here, Ukrainian forces unleashed their best drone units to cripple the Russian logistic routes east of Pokrovsk.  As Ukrainian drone forces established what soldiers on the ground now call roads of death, the Russian offensive has entered a new phase of collapse.

The Ukrainian operators began with methodical precision strikes in a full-scale campaign to annihilate enemy logistics. One geolocated video shows a Russian UAZ van erupting in flames after a Ukrainian FPV drone entered through its open window. 

Another drone caught a rare sighting on this front, a Russian T-80 tank as it tried to sneak along a road and provide fire support. The tank was protected by additional cages and electronic warfare, yet it was still easily hit. 

Additional footage from the region shows the vast scale of the operation, with Ukrainian drones targeting Russian supply vehicles of all kinds: vans, pickups, motorcycles, and even lone riders trying to deliver small batches of ammunition or rations to the front.

Drone operators relentlessly hunt down any movement, as confirmed by footage from both sides showing the aftermath of the Ukrainian strikes: twisted metal, burning wrecks, and craters every few meters. Russian riders filming their own advance revealed dozens of destroyed vehicles piled up at road bends, precisely the points where Ukrainian operators wait for the slightest slowdown of the enemy vehicle to strike with deadly accuracy.

These new roads of death mirror what already happened on the western flank of Pokrovsk. There, Russia’s entire offensive effort disintegrated under the pressure of Ukrainian drone strikes that paralyzed their logistics and ability to conduct any semblance of an offensive. 

A geolocated video recently released by Ukrainian forces shows the aftermath along just one stretch between Novotroitske and Novopustynka, with forty-seven destroyed armored vehicles scattered across just over a kilometer of road. Each was eliminated before reaching the front, proving how decisive Ukrainian drone fire control has become. 

With commander Robert Brovdi, callsign Magyar, overseeing the sector, Russian supply routes east of Pokrovsk are now facing the same fate. His doctrine is simple: total drone dominance stretching over a dozen kilometers behind the frontline, with every meter of road under observation, every vehicle tracked, and every movement punished immediately. It is this Ukrainian tactic that turned the western front into a graveyard of Russian armor, and it is now repeating itself to the east.

This coordinated drone campaign has forced the Russian military to completely rethink its tactics. The constant surveillance, long-range interdiction of convoys, and precision strikes on fuel and ammo trucks have left Russian commanders unable to sustain large-scale offensive operations. 

Motorcycles, once favored for rapid supply or evacuation, have proven equally vulnerable. One captured Russian soldier explained that even groups of two or three motorcycles are instantly targeted by Ukrainian FPV drones. Facing this, Russian tactics have devolved into infantry infiltration, tiny fireteams of up to three soldiers crawling through fields at night with thermal cloaks, hoping to evade detection.

But Brovdi’s units have adapted too: Ukrainian drones now prioritize infantry over vehicles, hunting down individuals to maintain what their commander described as the minimum monthly kill rate, which needs to be higher than Russia’s ability to mobilize new soldiers. 

Russian officers, desperate to find new methods, have resorted to deception, sending poorly equipped soldiers out to draw fire while better-trained troops attempt to move elsewhere. Yet Ukrainian reconnaissance networks easily expose such maneuvers, making every trick useless, as even some Russian analysts have admitted that 9 out of 10 infiltration groups never make it to their targets alive.

Overall, the picture that emerges east of Pokrovsk is the same as in the west—a crushed offensive, stalled under the unblinking eyes of Ukrainian drones. 

The roads of death are expanding, their blackened wrecks marking the edge of Russian reach. The sky belongs to Ukraine, and under Brovdi’s relentless coordination, every day brings new footage of destroyed armor and failed assaults. Whether the Russians will keep smashing their forces against this drone wall or shift their attention north to Kostiantynivka or Lyman, or south toward Zaporizhzhia remains to be seen.

In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.