TESTIMONY: Kostyantynivka — What the Front Says When Moscow Claims Victory

Introduction: A City Russian Propaganda Has Already Buried — and That Still Holds

June 23, 2026: Putin Speaks, the ISW Responds

On June 23, 2026, Vladimir Putin declared before his generals that Russian forces were «practically within range» of Kostyantynivka, an industrial city in the Donetsk region. The statement made the rounds of global news agencies. It was designed to. In Russia's cognitive warfare arsenal, a Putin declaration of imminent victory always precedes the attempt to achieve it — or, more often, to simulate it.

That same day, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — which geolocates and verifies every territorial claim since the beginning of the war — published its offensive campaign assessment. The verdict was unambiguous: Russian gains at Kostyantynivka were limited to «small group infiltrations», with no consolidated territorial control. Both realities — Putin's and the ISW's — coexist in the media landscape. Only one is backed by geolocated imagery.

What Ground-Level Data Reveals About the Real War

This gap between Russian propaganda and operational reality is nothing new. What is new is the growing sophistication of the tools deployed to sustain it. Artificial intelligence-generated videos showing Russian soldiers raising their flag in Kostyantynivka buildings circulated on Telegram with hundreds of thousands of views before being identified as digital fabrications. Cognitive warfare is no longer a supplement to physical war — it has become a central component, sometimes as consequential as artillery shells.

This testimony makes no claim to be that of a war correspondent present in Kostyantynivka. It is grounded in the verified operational data of the ISW, in the public statements of Ukrainian commanders, and in the analyses of international media outlets that have tracked this front for several weeks. What these sources say together deserves to be heard.

Kostyantynivka: A City of Symbolic and Strategic Value

The Geography of What Is at Stake

Kostyantynivka sits in the Donetsk region, roughly 30 kilometers northeast of Avdiivka — the city that fell to Russian forces in February 2024 after months of devastating assault. The capture of Avdiivka gave Russia a bridgehead from which to attempt a westward push. Yet two years on, territorial advances have been slow, costly, and typically measured in hundreds of meters per week.

Kostyantynivka still holds part of its pre-war civilian population, though sustained bombardment has reduced it to a fraction of 2021 levels. Strategically, the city controls key logistics corridors in the central Donetsk region. Were Russian forces to take it, they could threaten Kramatorsk and Sloviansk — the two major urban centers Moscow has been trying to reach since the intensive occupation phase began in 2022.

Why Russia Needs It as Much for Media as for Military Purposes

For Putin, a breakthrough at Kostyantynivka would carry value that goes well beyond the military terrain. After months of modest results in the east, a visible victory in a city whose name resonates in international news bulletins would allow him to relaunch the narrative of Russia's inexorable advance — a narrative that ground-level data has contradicted for months. That is why the June 23 declaration was as much an internal communications tool as a military description.

Russian forces are not «practically at Kostyantynivka» in any meaningful military sense. According to the ISW, they must cross 20 to 30 kilometers of terrain under Ukrainian fire to reach the city's outskirts. These are not abstract kilometers — they are 20 to 30 kilometers of Ukrainian FPV drones, artillery fire, minefields, and an active defense that the 19th Army Corps maintains with documented precision.

Commander Madyar: Numbers That Speak Louder Than Flags

53 Against 3 — The Asymmetry of Losses

Ukrainian Brigadier General Yuriy Madyar, deputy commander of the 19th Army Corps, released a public statement on June 25, 2026 about operations around Kostyantynivka. His figures are blunt and precise: Russian losses in the sector run at approximately 53 soldiers per day. Ukrainian losses run at approximately 3 soldiers per day. This ratio — which would be extraordinary in any conventional military context — is the result of an active defense doctrine that prioritizes stand-off strikes over direct engagement.

Madyar also confirmed that Ukrainian forces had cleared areas to the south of the city, where Russian elements had managed to infiltrate. He used the word «minimum» to describe the number of Russian soldiers who had reached those positions — validating the ISW's assessment that enemy advances were fragmented and unconsolidated.

The Drone Factor: Infantry That Moves Under the Sky's Watch

One reason for this asymmetry is the density of Ukrainian drone coverage in the sector. Russian forces attempting to advance toward Kostyantynivka must cross zones that Ukrainian FPV drone operators monitor continuously. Geolocated data published by the ISW includes strike footage of Russian infantry groups in open terrain several kilometers from the line of contact.

The practical, documented consequence: Russian troops can only advance at night, in small groups, avoiding known routes. Their resupply depends on drone drops — ammunition, food, medicine — because supply vehicles are priority targets. This operational model is slow, costly in lives, and fundamentally incompatible with a large-scale advance.

135 Drones in the Night — and 118 Shot Down

The Night of June 24–25: Numbers and Their Meaning

During the night of June 24–25, 2026, Russian forces launched 135 Shahed drones against Ukrainian territory — one of the largest salvos in recent weeks. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 118 of them, for an interception rate of 87%. The remaining 17 drones reached various targets, causing damage to civilian infrastructure across multiple regions.

These figures capture two simultaneous realities. First: Ukraine has built one of the most effective anti-drone defense systems in the world, combining ground-to-air systems of multiple generations, night interceptors, and electronic jamming. Second: even with an 87% failure rate, saturation by sheer volume remains a Russian doctrine capable of inflicting real damage.

The Economics of Terror: What Each Drone Costs and Returns

An Iranian-made Shahed drone costs approximately $50,000 to $75,000 according to defense analysts' estimates. The missile system that intercepts it costs several times that amount. The war of economic attrition Russia is waging forces Ukraine to spend more defending itself than Russia spends attacking. This is an equation the West must look squarely in the face: supporting Ukraine also means accepting responsibility for closing that cost gap.

But there is another dimension that raw numbers obscure. Every night of intense bombardment is also a night of civilian terror. The 17 drones that get through are not simply statistical losses in an interception rate. They are damaged hospitals, destroyed grain stores, families with no home left. Russian doctrine bets precisely on this dimension — breaking civilian morale as surely as it breaks infrastructure.

The Cognitive War: AI in the Service of Tactical Disinformation

Videos Too Perfect to Be True

On June 25, 2026, the ISW documented the spread across pro-Russian Telegram channels of multiple videos purportedly showing Russian soldiers planting flags in identifiable buildings in Kostyantynivka. These videos displayed visual characteristics consistent with artificial intelligence generation: unnatural lighting, subtle uniform distortions, unnaturally fluid crowd movements. Reverse image analyses showed that the buildings depicted did not match actual structures at the indicated addresses.

The distribution of these fabricated visuals is not inconsequential. It simultaneously targets multiple audiences: Russian public opinion, which needs proof of victory; Ukrainian supporters, whom it aims to demoralize; and Western media outlets, some of which occasionally republish such images without adequate verification, inadvertently amplifying adversarial propaganda.

Ukraine Facing the Narrative War

The Ukrainian military and its partners have developed rapid-verification counter-capabilities: fact-checking units embedded within command structures, OSINT (open-source intelligence) networks, partnerships with organizations like Bellingcat and Mnemonic. But the race between disinformation and verification plays out in real time, and social media always amplifies faster than it corrects.

The ISW itself has documented cases where its corrections of Russian disinformation reached only a fraction of the audience that had seen the original content. This is a structural asymmetry of the digital media ecosystem: the spectacular lie travels faster and farther than the precise truth. In wartime, that asymmetry has real military consequences — it can shape public support, funding decisions, and allied cohesion.

Trump, Levin, and Ukraine's «Battlefield Advantage»

When Washington Acknowledges What Moscow Denies

On June 24 and 25, 2026, two senior American officials made public statements that directly contradict the Russian narrative. Donald Trump said at a briefing that Ukraine held a «battlefield advantage». Deputy Secretary of State Levin used similar language, adding that Russian losses remained «unsustainable long-term».

These statements carry weight beyond mere rhetoric. They come from an administration not historically inclined to flatter Ukraine without reason. If Trump — who has sometimes appeared closer to the Russian position in informal comments — acknowledges a Ukrainian advantage on the ground, it is because he is drawing on concrete military intelligence that his generals are presenting to him, and that intelligence confirms the ISW's own assessment.

What It Changes — and What It Does Not

Acknowledging Ukrainian advantage does not automatically translate into increased support. American military aid to Ukraine remains subject to budgetary pressures and the domestic political trade-offs Trump must navigate with a divided Congress. Recognizing a battlefield advantage is an observation; deciding to reinforce it through weapons deliveries is a political choice.

But symbolically, it matters. One of Russia's most-repeated propaganda lines holds that Ukraine is on the brink of military collapse and that continuing to support it is «wasteful». When the President of the United States says the opposite explicitly, that line loses credibility in the Western capitals where support is sometimes hard-won.

The ISW and Russian Losses: What the Global Numbers Mean

57 Square Miles Net Lost in Four Weeks

Over the four weeks preceding June 15, 2026, the ISW documented that Russia had net lost 57 square miles of territory across multiple sectors of eastern Ukraine. That figure accounts for Russian advances in some areas and successful Ukrainian counter-attacks or withdrawals in others. The net balance is negative for Moscow.

This is not a Ukrainian triumph. It is not a Russian inexorable advance either. It is a war of attrition in its purest form: two armies bleeding, meter by meter, in a context where victory is measured not in sweeping breakthroughs but in organizational survival. In that kind of war, Ukraine — backed by Western arms and intelligence — is holding. That is not nothing.

Less Than 100 Meters a Day — the Real Pace of Advance

Russian advances in the most active sectors of Donetsk were measuring, in mid-June 2026, at less than 100 meters per day. At that rate, reaching Kostyantynivka from current forward positions would take several months of sustained combat, under the best possible conditions for Russia. And conditions are never ideal: Ukrainian counter-attacks, logistics neutralization operations behind the lines, and strikes on ammunition depots regularly slow any forward movement.

On June 25, 2026, the ISW recorded 251 separate engagements along the entire front line — the highest operational tempo in several weeks. This figure captures the relentless intensity of operations. Russia pushes. Ukraine holds. And the world watches maps where lines move so slowly that media outlets struggle to render them visible.

FAB-1500s Over Druzhkivka: The Bomb That Flattens Hope

The Glide Bomb as a Doctrine of Terror

While ground combat unfolded around Kostyantynivka, Russian warplanes intensified strikes with FAB-1500 and FAB-250 glide bombs against the Druzhkivka area, roughly 20 kilometers to the north. These munitions — conventional bombs fitted with guidance fins — are released from Su-34 aircraft that remain outside the range of medium-altitude air defense systems.

The FAB-1500 weighs 1,500 kilograms. Its impact creates a crater dozens of meters wide and destroys every structure within a considerable radius. It is used against military fortifications but also, documentarily, against residential areas. Its deployment against Druzhkivka illustrates Russia's doctrine of systematic destruction: rendering uninhabitable any zone that cannot be swiftly conquered.

Why Ukraine Cannot Yet Neutralize Them

Ukraine's response to Russian glide bombs runs into a documented material constraint: Patriot and SAMP/T systems can intercept ballistic missiles and drones, but glide-path FABs fly a low trajectory that makes them difficult to engage. Ukraine needs additional F-16 fighters to neutralize Russian Su-34s before they release their payloads — but current numbers remain insufficient to cover the entire eastern front.

This is one of the most concrete arguments Ukrainian commanders bring to their requests to Western allies. Not weapons «to win», but weapons to prevent aerial terror from becoming the systematic leveling of eastern Ukraine. Druzhkivka today, Kostyantynivka tomorrow — if the FAB doctrine goes unanswered, every city becomes a target for preemptive destruction.

The Civilians: Those Who Remain Under the Bombs

A Residual Population in a City Under Fire

In Kostyantynivka, the civilian population that has not yet evacuated consists mainly of elderly residents, families without the means to leave, and a small number of inhabitants who refuse to abandon their homes even under bombardment. Humanitarian organizations operating in the region report growing difficulties gaining access to deliver food, medicine, and clean water.

Ukrainian authorities have organized several rounds of voluntary evacuations. But the military presence in the city and daily bombardments make these operations logistically complex and psychologically exhausting. Every humanitarian convoy entering Kostyantynivka risks a strike — documented in several incidents over the past months.

International Humanitarian Law Put to the Test of Facts

Repeated strikes against documented civilian areas in the Kostyantynivka region are feeding the case files that organizations like Human Rights Watch and the ICC Prosecutor's Office continue to compile. Several international arrest warrants have already been issued against Russian military commanders. But at this stage, international justice remains largely powerless in the short term — and near-term impunity continues to fuel Russian military doctrine.

That is no reason to stop documenting. On the contrary, it is the primary reason why the work of the ISW, of journalists present in the field, and of verification organizations is indispensable. The memory built today is the justice made possible tomorrow. Even when tomorrow feels very far away.

Ukrainian Resistance: Doctrine, Morale, and Exhaustion

Four Years of Attrition War — What It Does to an Army

The Ukrainian army in 2026 is not the army of February 2022. It is more experienced, better equipped along certain axes, and deeply shaped by more than four years of intense combat. Human losses have been heavy. Front-line rotations are shorter out of necessity. Soldiers describe a weariness that goes beyond the physical — a moral fatigue that no support program can fully compensate.

And yet, ISW figures show an army that holds. That counter-attacks. That innovates tactically — notably in its use of reconnaissance drones and integrated guidance systems. The Ukrainian «active defense» doctrine, which relies on mobility and stand-off strikes rather than static defense, has demonstrated its effectiveness in the Donetsk theater over the past months.

Morale Under Pressure and Its Unsuspected Resources

What sustains Ukrainian morale in such a difficult context is not easy to quantify. There is the awareness of what is at stake — a military defeat would mean for millions of Ukrainians the loss of their country, their language, their identity. There is international solidarity, which translates into arms and money even when imperfect. And there is something harder to measure: the cold fury of a people who know exactly what they are defending because they have seen what losing looks like in the occupied territories.

Zelensky remains the symbol of this resistance — not because he is infallible, but because he did not leave when everyone offered him a way out. That choice, renewed daily through his presence in Kyiv, carries symbolic and military weight that analysts struggle to quantify but that soldiers on the front recognize immediately.

The ISW as a Living Archive: Method and Limits

What the ISW Does — and How

The Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington, has published a daily assessment of the offensive campaign since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Its method rests on the systematic geolocation of videos and images published by both sides, cross-referenced against commercial satellite data and official statements compared to ground realities. It is one of the most-cited analytical sources by Western governments, journalists, and military institutions.

The ISW is not flawless. Its assessments sometimes lag events by 24 to 48 hours. Its Ukrainian sources are more accessible than its Russian ones. And its pro-Ukrainian defense orientation is documented — this does not imply a systematic bias, but it calls for careful reading. Despite these limitations, it remains the most rigorous publicly available verification instrument covering this conflict.

What Field Journalists Add

Reporters present in Kostyantynivka and its surroundings — correspondents from CNN, The Guardian, Kyiv Independent, France 24 — provide what geolocated data cannot: immediate human testimony. Images of a building blown apart by a FAB-1500. The face of a 73-year-old woman who refuses to evacuate. The voice of a soldier three days from rotation. These elements are not peripheral anecdotes — they are the human translation of the data the ISW processes as geographic coordinates.

The war for Kostyantynivka exists simultaneously in both registers. In the ISW's analytical dashboards, and in the eyes of a civilian scanning the sky every thirty seconds. Both are real. Both are necessary to understand what «holding» means in this war.

Western Support: Essential, Insufficient, and Never Guaranteed

What Ukraine Receives and What It Still Lacks

In June 2026, Western military support for Ukraine includes air defense systems, artillery ammunition, armored vehicles, an insufficient number of F-16s, and a continuous flow of real-time intelligence. This support has been critical to sustaining Ukrainian resistance. It nonetheless remains below what Ukrainian commanders estimate necessary to mount a large-scale counter-offensive.

The specific requests remain consistent: more Patriot systems to cover the eastern front, more long-range munitions to strike Russian logistics depots in depth, and more F-16s to counter Su-34 bombers. Each of these requests runs up against constraints of production capacity, national stockpiles, and political calculation in the capitals that supply them.

Aid Fatigue — A Real Risk

«Aid fatigue» is a documented phenomenon in Western public opinion. After more than four years of war, the level of public attention and generosity is no longer what it was in the spring of 2022. Governments that continue to support Ukraine must make trade-offs against electorates with other priorities — inflation, housing, employment. This context creates constant pressure to reduce or condition aid.

That is precisely what Russia is waiting for. Its prolonged war doctrine rests on the bet that the West will tire before the Russian army implodes. ISW figures on Russian losses suggest this bet is far from won militarily. But diplomatically and politically, the window remains open. Kostyantynivka is not only a battle for the Donbas — it is a test of Western consistency.

251 Engagements in a Single Day: The Front That Never Sleeps

Twenty-Five Times More Than a Conflict Called «Frozen»

The figure of 251 separate engagements recorded on June 25, 2026 along the entire front line captures the true scale of this war. In most contemporary armed conflicts, a daily count of 10 to 20 incidents is already considered a high intensity level. At 251, this is total war, continuous and distributed across hundreds of kilometers of front.

These 251 engagements include infantry assaults, artillery duels, drone engagements, bridging attempts, and reconnaissance-in-force operations. Each one involves real-time decisions, potential casualties, and consequences that accumulate on the map like pixels in an ever-sharper image of mutual exhaustion.

The Front Line as a Barometer of Political Will

What these 251 daily engagements ultimately convey is that this war is not about to end through a unilateral military decision. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is on the verge of achieving the total victory each defines in its official statements. What is being decided across these hundreds of daily engagements is the definition of conditions for the eventual negotiation — where the lines will stand when both sides, exhausted or constrained by external pressure, finally sit down together.

Kostyantynivka will not fall tomorrow. It may not fall in the coming months. But every day it holds, every drone shot down, every engagement in which Ukraine keeps its position, is one day that marginally shifts the balance of forces. In a war of attrition, margins count. That is the only arithmetic that matters.

The War of Perceptions: When Data Contradicts the Narrative

The Gap Between Russia's Official Narrative and Documented Reality

On June 24, 2026, as Russian screens looped Putin's declarations about the advance toward Kostyantynivka, the ISW's geolocated maps told a radically different story. Russian territorial gains in the sector amounted to a few partially controlled city blocks, with no consolidated front line, bearing no relation to an imminent city seizure. This gap between official pronouncements and mapped reality is not accidental — it is a military communications doctrine that Russia has applied consistently since 2022.

The international press — Reuters, AFP, The Guardian — has systematically cross-referenced Russian declarations against available ground data. The result is always the same: Moscow's claims precede reality by weeks, sometimes months. And when reality fails to follow, the declarations are simply forgotten, replaced by the next announcement of imminent victory. This cycle has repeated itself at Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Marinka — and now at Kostyantynivka.

Perception as a Battlefield in Its Own Right

What has changed since 2022 is the sophistication of the disinformation tools deployed. AI-generated videos, coordinated Telegram accounts, networks of fake local journalists — all instruments aimed at creating a credible parallel reality in which Russian victories are presented as established before they even occur. The goal is not to convince Western analysts — it is to saturate mainstream media with enough noise to make the truth difficult to perceive.

Faced with this war of perceptions, organizations like the ISW, Bellingcat, and the investigative teams of Kyiv Independent play a role that governments themselves cannot fully perform. Their credibility rests on their verifiable method, not on institutional authority. This is an informational line of defense whose strategic importance is still underestimated in Western defense budgets.

Conclusion: Kostyantynivka Holds — and That Is Enough for Today

What «Holding» Means in This War

The operational reality at Kostyantynivka in this last weekend of June 2026 can be summarized plainly: the city is not encircled, Russian forces do not control it, and Putin's claims of an imminent advance do not correspond to available geolocated data. This is not a spectacular victory. It is documented resistance — methodical, costly in lives, and real.

In the war Ukraine has been fighting since February 24, 2022, «holding» has been, on several occasions, the condition for the Ukrainian state's survival. Holding Kyiv in March 2022. Holding Kharkiv against spring offensives. Holding the east while the West decided to deliver heavy weapons. Today, holding Kostyantynivka is one tile in the same mosaic — less spectacular than the defense of Kyiv, but just as real in what it means on the map.

What the World Must Do With This Reality

What the ISW data, Commander Madyar's statements, and the 251 engagements of June 25, 2026 say together is that Ukraine can hold if Western support stays in place. That is not a guarantee. It is not a promise. It is an equation: munitions plus intelligence plus defense systems, against a Russian army losing 53 men per day in this sector alone. Ukraine is not asking the world to win the war for it. It is asking for the tools not to lose it. That is a reasonable request. And it has not yet been fully met.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency box

Method and editorial positioning

This testimony is based exclusively on verified public sources: daily assessments from the ISW (Institute for the Study of War), official statements from identified Ukrainian commanders, and geolocated dispatches from international press agencies. The author was not present in Kostyantynivka. No scene has been invented or reconstructed. The opinions expressed in the editorial passages are clearly identified as such.

Declared limits and biases

ISW data is publicly accessible but presents a bias toward Ukrainian sources that are more readily available. Loss figures — Russian and Ukrainian alike — are estimates whose accuracy cannot be fully verified independently. This text reflects the state of information available on June 26, 2026 and may be superseded by subsequent operational developments.

Sources

Primary sources

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment — June 23, 2026

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment — June 24, 2026

ISW/CriticalThreats — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment — June 25, 2026

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment — June 21, 2026

Secondary sources

KRDO/CNN — Russia still inching forward in Ukraine but experts say progress claims are exaggerated — June 24, 2026

Kyiv Independent — Continuous coverage, Donetsk front — June 2026

Ukrinform — Operational bulletins, Eastern front — June 2026

Militarnyi — Tactical analyses, Donetsk sector — June 2026