"Winter may be decisive": if Donbas falls, the Russian Federation will launch an offensive on Kharkiv, — Foreign Affairs

At the same time, the journalists note that the Russians are behind their "schedule" by a year, as they planned to capture Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region by November 2024. The authors of the article noted that the Defense Forces of Ukraine, despite the significant superiority of the enemy in terms of numbers, eliminated more than 20,000 Russian soldiers every month.

Currently, the occupiers are throwing more and more troops into the destroyed Pokrovsk, and the drones of the Russian Armed Forces are cutting off the logistical routes of Ukrainian fighters. At the same time, the journalists emphasize that the active battles are not only for Pokrovsk.

According to them, the Russian Armed Forces are taking Ukrainian positions in "pockets" in the north and south and occupying the outskirts of Kostyantynivka, hunting civilians in Kramatorsk and using new long-range drones and bombs that they plan to destroy Ukrainian cities. Also recently, the Russians advanced north along the Dnipro River, which endangers the Zaporizhia direction.

At the same time, the journalists write that this "winter could be decisive" for the Russian-Ukrainian war, since the Russian Federation is producing more missiles than ever, and is destroying the Ukrainian power grid and making it impossible to provide electricity to all Ukrainians.

According to the authors of the article, if the Kremlin can increase its attacks on Ukraine's energy sector, combined with the weakening of Ukrainian defense lines, it will be able to take a course to force Kyiv to submit in 2026. In May 2025, the British analytical center RUSI also wrote that in the event of the capture of the Donetsk region during the summer, the Russian Armed Forces could launch an offensive against Kharkiv.

At the same time, the spokesman of the "Kharkiv" operational-tactical group, Pavlo Shamshin, said on May 29 that there is no threat of a breakthrough of 50,000 troops to Kharkiv, as reported by the media, because the reserves accumulated by the enemy near the border with the Kharkiv region are not sufficient for an offensive. The Financial Times, citing Ukrainian military officer Artem Karyakin, wrote on November 11 that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were losing Pokrovsk due to a lack of people.