It was a clear attempt to project Russian power.

Hours before meeting US officials in Moscow this past week about their plan to end the war, President Vladimir V. Putin claimed that Russia’s forces had seized the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after a monthslong fight.

The reality was murkier. Slivers of the city were still contested, according to battlefield maps and the Ukrainian military. But Putin’s claim, even if premature, reflected a trend shaping his unbending approach to negotiations: Russian forces are on the march.

“The Russians do have the upper hand,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group. Ukraine is not yet at the point where it must capitulate, he said, but it “is looking weak enough that the Russians think that they can impose demands”.

Putin has ordered the Russian military to prepare for winter combat, signalling after the talks with US officials that he is not budging from his hard-line demands. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has since held a series of discussions in Miami with Ukraine’s delegation — with another expected to take place on Saturday — that both sides called “constructive”.

As these statements were being released, Russia unleashed more than 650 drones and 51 missiles on towns and cities across Ukraine in an assault that began overnight on Friday and stretched through Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials said.

In recent weeks, Russian forces have advanced on several fronts. They are on the brink of capturing Pokrovsk, a onetime logistics hub in the eastern region of Donetsk, and have nearly encircled its neighbour, Myrnohrad. They are moving quicker in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. They are pressing closer to the northeastern city of Kupiansk, and they are making gains around the eastern city of Siversk, according to battlefield maps, analysts and soldiers.

The advances have been slow and costly, in both lives and equipment. Ukrainian officials and analysts say Putin could still be years away from achieving his territorial goals. Chief among them is capturing the rest of the Donetsk region, which would give Russia all of the broader eastern Ukrainian area known as the Donbas.

But Russia’s pace is quickening, and incremental moves have started to add up. Moscow’s forces captured 505 square kilometres of territory in November, up from 267 square kilometres in October, according to the battlefield map maintained by DeepState, a Ukrainian group with ties to the military.

“The future looks really, really grim for Ukraine,” said Kastehelmi, the analyst. “I don’t see a clear path out.”

For now, Ukraine appears to have enough resources to keep the front line from collapsing. But it is bending. Putin has suggested that Ukraine, facing manpower shortages and uncertainty about Western aid, should concede to his demands before the war gets even worse.

The Russian leader, in an interview with an Indian news outlet that was published on Thursday, said Russia would take additional territory in Donetsk by whatever means necessary.

The Kremlin’s summer offensive, which was aimed at capturing all of Donetsk, produced limited gains. But starting in the fall, the tide there started to turn in Russia’s favour. After months of bombarding Pokrovsk with artillery, drones and glide bombs, Russian forces punched through a string of villages and settlements to fight their way into the city.

“Things started to fall apart a bit on our side” starting in September, said Ihor, a Ukrainian drone pilot in the area who gave only his first name, according to military protocol. “The line just began collapsing from exhaustion.”

Russian forces are sending fixed-wing Molniya drones and waves of mini kamikaze drones that carry explosives, he said, adding that Ukraine had nothing comparable in mass production.

The current push for a peace plan is “all bluff”, he said, adding that as long as the Russians have “the ability to press us, they will keep pressing”.

At the same time, Russian forces have taken aim at other critical cities in Donetsk, including Kostiantynivka and Lyman. Oleh Voitsekhovskyi, a Ukrainian captain whose unit is near Lyman, said Russian forces were attacking “all the time” and “along all directions”.

Drone strikes, shelling — it never stops, he said. “In the last two months”, he added, “you can feel an increase in the intensity of hostilities”.

Some analysts have questioned Ukraine’s decision to keep fighting in Pokrovsk and incur heavy losses there. Analysts and some Ukrainian soldiers have said Kyiv may be trying to hold on to avoid feeding Russia’s narrative of inevitable victory as peace talks heat up.

New York Times News Service