European supports in Ukraine will perform this Thursday, September 4, during a meeting at the Elysée Palace and in videoconference, which are “ready” for the granting of security guarantees in Ukraine. Now they are waiting for the concrete “support” of the Americans, the French presidency announced on Tuesday.
The French president and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, co -resist the meeting, which will take place both in face and videoconference. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, present at the Elysée Palace, will also have Donald Trump on the phone.
If kyiv’s allies are preparing security guarantees by anticipating a possible end of the fight, the negotiations carried out with Russia under Donald Trump’s leadership stagnate and the war continues in Ukraine.
“All Russian armed forces groups are offensive” in all sectors of the front, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Wednesday, which remained inflexible despite his summit with Donald Trump in Alaska.
The Russian Army always offensive in Donbass, its main objective
Russia states that Ukraine gives him the entire Donbass region, which in general includes the Oblarts of Donetsk and Lougansk, before concluding any high fire. Kyiv, who still controls a third of Donetsk, rejects this claim.
Beyond territorial considerations, it is the best defended part of the front, composed of a belt from the cities of the fortress and hundreds of kilometers of trenches and mines fields.
“Ukraine has spent the last eleven years investing time, money and efforts to strengthen this fortifications belt,” said the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in early August. Russian troops have no way to “penetrate these fortifications quickly”, and they would take years to achieve them, says this institute.
However, the Russian army continues to nibble in this region, which has been the main theater of clashes for two years. Also according to the ISW, almost 70% of the Russian increase in August 2025 is concentrated in the eastern region of Donetsk. The Russians have advanced there in almost 400 km² and demanded the control of 79.6% in this region, compared to 63% of the previous year. About 31% of this region was already under the control of the Porussian separatists before the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The advance of Russian troops has already led to the fall of several very fortified cities of Donbass such as Bakhmout in May 2022, Avdiïvka in February 2024 and Vougledar in October 2024. Today, and in terms of months, the fighting is mainly concentrated around the Pokrovsk logistics node. The Russian army is approaching the city on three sides and today is less than five kilometers away.
“The Russians are taking the village town for the people, but the Ukrainians are currently leading to very localized counteroffensives that allow to restore some space to the defenders of Pokrovsk,” he explains to BFMTV Ulrich Bounat, specialist in Eastern Europe and associate researcher at Think Euro Crost.
The other hot points on the front are around Kostyntynynivka, Drugkivka, Lyman or Siversk. Ultimately, the Russian army aims to take the big cities of Kramorsk and Sloviansk, located about thirty kilometers behind the front. “These are two very close cities that constitute a very important type of belt to form for Ukrainians,” said Ulrich Bounat.
An unprecedented incursion in the Dnipropetrovsk region
The Russian army announced in June entered the Oblast of Dnipropetrovsk, a region that was not yet worried about the invasion of Russian troops on the ground. This Tuesday, August 26, Ukraine recognized this incursion for the first time after denying it so far.
This advance, unprecedented since 2022, is combined with strong bombings. Russia launched, according to Kyiv, on Friday 29 to Saturday, August 30, a “massive” attack, especially in the important cities of Dnipro and Pavlogra.
However, experts contacted by BFMTV call to put the incursion of Russian soil into perspective, which would partly be a communication operation. “The Russians do not have the ability today to take a new Oblast, explained General Jérôme Pellistrandi, BFMTV defense consultant, last June. If they eat in the field every day in the Ukrainians,” there is no decisive advance of 10-15 km per day that would allow them to enter the center of Ukraña. “
“Months have passed since the Russians revolve around this administrative border between the Oblastes of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk as part of their movements to Pokrovsk. Very specifically, that does not change much from a military point of view,” confirms Ulrich Bounat.
But according to this expert, the penetration in a region so far saved by the war is instrumentalized by Russia “to tell the Ukrainians that the more they resist, the more other territories lose.”
Russia massage your troops, towards a great scale offensive?
Russia has concentrated “up to 100,000” soldiers near Pokrovsk, a key city in eastern Ukraine, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the end of August, watching the situation as “the most worrying today.” The Russian army “prepares offensive actions in any case,” he added.
The previous week, Volodymyr Zelensky had already said that Moscow was massaging units in the occupied part of the Zaporijia region, in southern Ukraine.
Is Russia preparing for a new important offensive in the coming months? “We cannot exclude it, but I’m still quite cautious,” says Ulrich Bounat. “In fact, there is a desire on the part of the Russians to stretch the Ukrainian defensive devices as much as possible to create infractions in which the Russian army can hurry.”
“However, Russians no longer have the ability to lead really serious offensives in all lines of the front because they also face problems of men and equipment. Everything has been indicating for several months that the main offensive axis remains the Donbass, whose Kremlin wants to take advantage of any cost,” continues the expert.
Ukrainian cities increasingly directed
Parallel to the offensive on the front, the Russian army hit the Ukrainian cities every night, either on the front line or more west of the country.
According to the AFP analysis of the daily reports of the Ukraine Air Force, Russia attracted a total of 4,132 drones during its night attacks against Ukraine in August, a very high figure compared to the beginning of 2025 but which represents a 34% decrease compared to July.
Despite this slight decrease, Russian bombings remain mortal, causing many victims among civilians. kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, suffered one of the most devastating attacks against drones and missiles on August 28, which killed 25 people, including several children.
“Ukrainian cities have always been attacked, but today’s Russians have capacity, especially in terms of drones, which are superior to what they could do before,” said Ulrich Bounat.
According to our expert, “there is a desire to push Ukrainians to make impossible decisions: is it better to defend cities or defend military objectives?”
For its part, the Ukrainian army responded by pointing to Russian energy infrastructure. As on Saturday night to 23 to Sunday, August 24, when a series of drones attacks caused fires in Russia on the site of a nuclear energy plant and in an oil terminal.
“This is how Ukraine reacts when his calls to peace are ignored,” the president of Loles, Zelensky, had proclaimed Ukraine Independence Day.
Source: BFM TV
