A Ukrainian military officer said Russian troops have been trying to assault the city from the east and north, while attempting to cut off the logistics route supplying the city.

11 December 2025

Hulyaipole remains firmly under Ukrainian control but has faced fierce Russian assaults, a Ukrainian military officer said on Thursday.

The city, a stronghold in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, is located approximately 87 km (54 miles) east of the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia. It 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.

Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Defense Forces, told state media Ukrinform that Russia continues heavy assaults from the north and east, attempting to enter the city but failing.

“The enemy tried to enter there, to bring in several of their assault groups, but we destroyed them there, and all their attempts were unsuccessful,” he said

“That is, there is no enemy in Hulyaipole, I repeat.”

Russian troops have also been trying to sever the supply route into the city, Voloshyn said.

“First, the enemy is trying to capture the city of Hulyaipole itself from the east and north. In addition, they are trying to cut off the logistical routes leading to Hulyaipole, in particular those from the north,” he said.

“That route is from Pokrovske, Dnipropetrovsk region, to Hulyaipole – this is one of the main logistical routes,” he added, saying that Kyiv’s troops are continuing to repel Russian attempts via the nearby settlement of Varvarivka.

Pokrovske is a similarly named settlement in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region – not to be confused with Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk region that remains under Kyiv control after 16 months of fighting as of Wednesday.

Apart from Russian infiltration groups, Voloshyn said Russia has also struck Hulyaipole using guided bombs.

“Yesterday [Russia] bombed Hulyaipole itself quite intensively, more than 25 guided bombs were recorded that flew over the city,” he said.

Hulyaipole under threat

Data from the open-source battlefield map DeepState UA suggest that Russian troops have advanced and captured multiple settlements east of Hulyaipole over the past three weeks.

As of Nov. 22, a previous Kyiv Post report asserted that Russian troops had advanced and captured multiple settlements east of Hulyaipole but stopped short at the villages of Chervone and Zelenyi Hai.

But as of Dec. 10, Russia had captured those settlements and is now pressing against the suburbs of Hulyaipole from the northeast.

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.

Current US-Ukraine peace talks suggest Kyiv would be pressed to concede all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – terms it rejects – while proposals for the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, both partly occupied by Russia, have not been revealed.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/66060