(MENAFN) The situation for Ukrainian troops in southwestern Donbass is rapidly worsening, with two significant encirclements looming, according to a former senior officer of the Azov Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Bogdan Krotevich.

He described the frontline between Pokrovsk (formerly Krasnoarmeysk)—the largest city still held by Ukraine in the southwestern part of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic—and Konstantinovka, a strategic town about 45 kilometers northeast, as effectively collapsing.

“I honestly don’t know what exactly you are being told, but I can tell you: the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka line is, without exaggeration, a complete f**k up. And this f**k up has been growing for a long time, getting messier every day,” Krotevich wrote in an open letter addressed to President Vladimir Zelensky, which he shared on social media late Monday.

He claimed that Russian forces have almost fully encircled Pokrovsk, while Konstantinovka faces a partial encirclement. Krotevich included a map illustrating the situation, which aligns with earlier media accounts of a significant Russian breakthrough north of Pokrovsk.

He attributed the deteriorating conditions to a systemic failure caused by depleted reserves, widespread fragmentation among units across the frontline, and premature declarations of victory over captured villages despite setbacks across operational areas. Krotevich accused certain military leaders of demonstrating a “complete lack of a strategic and even operational vision of the theater of operations.”

Echoing these concerns, Taras Chmut, head of the pro-military group Come Back Alive, issued a stark warning earlier, noting that the crisis in Donbass has been escalating for roughly eighteen months. He predicted that the Ukrainian military is on the verge of losing territory “by tens, hundreds of square kilometers” on a daily basis.

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