Russian troops have been attempting to break into the city center of southern Ukraine’s Hulyaipole, according to a military spokesperson.
Hulyaipole is located approximately 87 km (54 miles) east of Zaporizhzhia. Analysts previously warned that the fall of Hulyaipole could pave the way for Russian advances towards Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital.
Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesman for the Southern Defense Forces, said on national television that Hulyaipole witnessed some of the heaviest fighting on the front.
“Over the past day, in particular in Hulyaipole itself, there have been two dozen combat clashes – this is a fairly high indicator of enemy activity,” Voloshyn said, as reported by state media Ukrinform.
Voloshyn said Russian troops have tried to infiltrate into the city center while pressuring the logistics route supplying the city.
“The enemy is trying to infiltrate the city center, its assault groups are trying to get into the middle of the city. The enemy is trying to establish groups on the outskirts to consolidate,” Voloshyn said.
He said “very fierce fighting” is ongoing near the settlements of Dobropillya, Pryluky, and Varvarivka as Russian troops attempt to approach and enter these settlements along the Pokrovske-Hulyaipole route, which supplies the city.
Pokrovske is a similarly named settlement in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region – not to be confused with Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk region.
Voloshyn said Moscow’s goal in Hulyaipole is to “advance as far as possible and capture as many blocks, streets, and houses in this settlement as possible.”
Hulyaipole was also home to Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary who led the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine during the complex civil war that followed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Russia presses hard against the southern Ukraine stronghold
The open-source battlefield map DeepState UA shows the city remains under Ukrainian control as of Wednesday, Dec. 24, though half of it is now classified as a gray zone with contested control.
DeepState data shows that Russian troops are attempting a two-prong offensive from the northeast and southeast to break into the city.
A Kyiv Post report on Dec. 11 asserted that Russian troops had captured major settlements east and north of Hulyaipole within a few weeks and pressed directly against the city itself.
Earlier reports suggest that Russia captured nearby settlements under the cover of fog, while some analysts criticized the slow Ukrainian response, claiming it allowed Russian forces to probe weak points and advance.
Previously, military analyst Denys Popovych told Kyiv24 that if Hulyaipole were to fall, Zaporizhzhia itself and Orikhiv, another stronghold on the front, would be next.
At present, Russia has occupied over 73% of the Zaporizhzhia region, including the nation’s largest nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, though the regional capital Zaporizhzhia remains firmly under Ukrainian control.
Kyiv has called for a ceasefire along the contact line as the basis for ongoing peace talks, a proposal Moscow previously rejected while vowing to capture all Ukrainian regions it annexed through an unrecognized referendum.