Ukrainian troops deployed to Kostyantynivka, the fighting front’s hottest sector, on Tuesday rejected a Kremlin narrative that Russia had conquered the city, with combatants claiming that Russian troops forced to attack the strategic road and logistics hub aren’t so much advancing as being hunted down and killed by drones.
Oleksandr Rashevsky, commander of the Ukrainian police special operations infantry unit Liyut, in a Tuesday comment published on the brigade’s official Telegram channel, said that his troops are currently deployed in the city of Kostyantynivka and are successfully holding their ground.
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The main attack tactic used by the Russians is infiltration into the urban landscape by groups of one to three men, with the objective of hiding somewhere before Ukrainian drones find them.
“Kostyantynivka is one of the key directions for the enemy’s advance to the Kramatorsk-Slovyansk agglomeration. That is why they spare neither forces nor means. We inflict significant losses on them, but the replenishment of personnel is constantly taking place, so the situation remains very tense,” Rashevsky told the Ukrainian news magazine Obozrevatel.
“However, we hold our positions, and we are finding the enemy and continuing to destroy him,” he added.
Rashevsky’s and other frontline Ukrainian comments reviewed by Kyiv Post sharply contradicted claims made first by Russian General Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian Army – that Kremlin forces had captured the Donbas city and scored an important strategic success.
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An industrial center with a peacetime population of around 70,000, Kostyantynivka is a key intermediate objective in the Kremlin-declared campaign to conquer and annex all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas territories.
Russia’s authoritarian President Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with Gerasimov televised nationally, praised the Russian military for defeating its Ukrainian opponents in open battle and ejecting all Kyiv’s forces from the city, and stated that total Ukrainian defeat at Russia’s hands was inevitable.
However, official Ukrainian spokesmen, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, were quick to contradict the Kremlin’s narrative.
Most said the situation in Kostyantynivka was difficult for Ukrainian forces in the face of continuous Russian infiltration attacks, but that Ukrainian lines were holding.
Zelensky, in a dig against his Russian counterpart’s rare public appearances and avoidance of frontline visits, said that if Russia had really captured Kostyantynivka, then “Putin would have no problem” going there to discuss peace.
Frontline content from the Ukrainian side and milblogger comments from the Russian side have strongly supported the Ukrainian version of the Kostyantynivka battles and cast doubt on the official Kremlin version of the combat.
A total of 21 soldiers identified as members of Ukraine’s 19th Army Corps in a Monday video said they are holding positions in the city successfully. Most of the speakers are unmasked, with landmarks, some geolocated within Kostyantynivka, being visible.
Speakers said they were members of the 3rd Battalion, 44th Mechanized Infantry Brigade; the 100th Mechanized Brigade; the Liyut police special forces regiment; the 3rd Battalion, 156th Mechanized Brigade; the 28th Mechanized Battalion; the 1st Battalion, 18th Brigade; and the 36th Marine Brigade. All those units have deployed ground troops in Kostyantynivka since early summer.
One speaker said the video was recorded on Saturday, the day after Putin and Gerasimov claimed Russian forces had taken over the city.
Along with the major headquarters of the 19th Army Corps and a reported 5-8 ground brigades, Ukraine’s commanders have deployed strike drone units specializing in first-person-view (FPV) operations to the Kostyantynivka area.
Combat video published on Tuesday by Ukraine’s 28th Mechanized Infantry Brigade showed FPV drones chasing down and impacting individual Russian soldiers in open fields, wood lines, ruined buildings, and dugouts.
Bomber drones are shown dropping munitions, at times three or more on a single target, on possible Russian positions. Some strikes are even held at night. Some, but not all, of the images could be geolocated in the Kostyantynivka sector.
The official 28th Brigade video credited the high-profile drone unit Kurt&Company for carrying out some of the attacks and called Gerasimov’s claim of Kostyantynivka’s capture “Fantasy TV.”
“Dead men tell no tales. If by the complete ‘liberation’ of Kostyantynivka the Russian General Staff means the city and its surroundings being covered with the bodies of their soldiers, then they are right…those who are still lucky enough to slip through the FPV line will face an ignominious death in the basements of Kostyantynivka. Each of our units is working on this 24/7,” the report says in part.
Additionally, Ukraine’s General Staff on Tuesday reported combat operations were mostly unchanged from previous days and weeks, with 34 engagements recorded in the Konstantynivka sector and no ground lost.
The Ukraine-based, independent military research group DeepState, in a Sunday analysis of the Kostyantynivka sector, generally matched the official Ukrainian army view of the situation. According to them, Ukrainian defenses in the area are holding, and Russian claims that Kremlin forces have captured the city are invented.
“Currently, active fighting for the city is ongoing in Kostyantynivka. The enemy has approached the outskirts of the settlement, began to gain a foothold there and infiltrate deep into the city…constant infiltrations into the settlement itself continue, where the Muscovites are suffering significant losses,” that analysis says.
“The situation in the city cannot be called easy and controlled, but it is worth noting that Kostyantynivka remains under the control of the Defense Forces of Ukraine,” it adds.
Oleksandr Onikolchuk, a Marine drone unit commander, in a Sunday interview with Ukraine’s Ediny Novyny national news broadcast, said fighting is taking place “across the city.”
“If we are talking about Kostyantynivka, then the situation is that there is fighting across the city. Factually, it’s a great big gray zone. This means that there is a very big area that we have to go through and clean up. You have to check every building, every floor, every cellar,” he said.
Graphics published by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on Monday showed the eastern third of Kostyantynivka under clear Russian control and the bulk of the city under disputed control.
According to the independent situation estimate, Russian forces were continuing infiltration missions in the area against organized Ukrainian defenses that were inflicting significant casualties.
Russians, usually vociferously supporting Moscow and its invasion of Ukraine, have, since Gerasimov’s and Putin’s declaration, questioned whether the city is in Russian hands and whether the Kremlin is telling the truth about it.
Semyon Pegov, author of the popular WarGonzo Telegram channel (750,000 followers), said that battles in the city were still in progress in his Sunday report.
Pavel Gubarov, a former Donetsk region official cooperating with Russian authorities, on Sunday reported that the Kremlin’s announcement of the capture of Kostyantynivka was “premature.”
“There is a high probability that the red stripes imagined capture of almost half a city in advance, and then reported the capture. I contacted the fighters to check information… Not a single source has unequivocally confirmed the news about the capture of the city,” Gubarov wrote, referring to the Russian high command by the broad red stripes down the outer seams of a general’s trousers.
Gubarov said that Russian state messaging about Kostyantynivka reminded him of Russian army claims of the capture of the Kharkiv city of Kupyansk in late 2025, during which Gerasimov and other Kremlin officials falsely and repeatedly claimed the city of 25,000 was fully under Russian control.
The narrative exploded in a major embarrassment for the Kremlin in early December, when President Zelensky traveled to Kupyansk to record videos from the city to prove Russian reports had been falsified.
“The analogy with Kupyansk may turn out to be accurate and there will be similar consequences,” Gubarov predicted.
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