# OPEN LETTER: Huliaipole and Orikhiv — This Too-Often Forgotten Front Cannot Fall

> Some city names come back every week in war briefings. Pokrovsk. Toretsk. Bakhmut, once. And then there is Huliaipole — a name that rarely makes it past the gates of the major newsrooms, yet one that has, since December 2025, been absorbing a Russian military pressure that the most sober analysts describe as structural, not cyclical. This is not a secondary front. It is a strat

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Open letter
- Published: 2026-06-29
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-huliaipole-et-orikhiv-ce-front-qu-on-oublie-trop-souvent-ne-peut-

## Introduction: A Front Line Barely Named, Yet Holding Southern Europe

### Zaporizhzhia, the Media Silence, and What It Costs

Some city names come back every week in war briefings. **Pokrovsk**. **Toretsk**. **Bakhmut**, once. And then there is **Huliaipole** — a name that rarely makes it past the gates of the major newsrooms, yet one that has, since **December 2025**, been absorbing a Russian military pressure that the most sober analysts describe as structural, not cyclical. This is not a secondary front. It is a strategic artery that runs, in near-direct line, to **Orikhiv**, then to **Zaporizhzhia**, a city of **700,000 people** and a symbol of a region that cannot be allowed to fall.

I am writing this letter because I am tired of the silence. Not the silence of the soldiers — they do their work with a consistency that commands respect. The silence of the media, of the commentators, of the Western capitals that continue to file this front under "status quo" when the reality is far more complex. **Huliaipole** was captured by the Russians in **December 2025**. Since then, **Ukraine** launched a counter-offensive, reclaimed **300 km²** and **8 settlements** by **February 2026**. But the pressure does not let up. And **Orikhiv** remains in the crosshairs.

*When I see Zaporizhzhia vanish from the front pages, I wonder whether we have already decided, without saying so, that some fronts matter less than others. That is not geopolitics. That is abandonment by omission.*

## December 2025: The Fall of Huliaipole and What It Reveals

### A Symbolic City That Fell into Indifference

The fall of **Huliaipole** in **December 2025** did not happen in a vacuum. It was the result of accumulated pressure over months — repeated assaults by the Russian **5th Combined Arms Army**, daily artillery bombardments, high Ukrainian casualties in a sector the command had decided to defend with limited resources. What was lost was not only a city. It was an anchor point that opened a corridor of advance toward the southwest — toward **Orikhiv**, toward the **Zaporizhzhia** region itself.

The Russian army did not improvise this offensive. It concentrated its forces, exploited the fatigue of Ukrainian units on rotation, and leveraged a relatively open terrain — steppe, few natural obstacles — to advance with a combination of light infantry, armoured vehicles, and air cover provided by **glide bombs**. The capture of **Huliaipole** was a calculated military objective within a larger plan: reach **Orikhiv**, then potentially **Stepnohirsk**, then cut the resupply axis running north along the **Zaporizhzhia front**.

### What This Means Geographically

**Orikhiv** is **98 km** from the city of **Zaporizhzhia**, the regional capital where some **700,000 people** still live. Between those two points, the road is flat, exposed, barely defensible without massive resources. If **Orikhiv** were to fall — and nothing indicates that is imminent, but nothing rules it out — the pressure on the city of **Zaporizhzhia** would become unsustainable. This is not catastrophism. It is a simple geographic consequence that any field officer can read on a map in three seconds.

People often speak of the **Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant**, occupied by Russia since **2022**, as a major risk factor. It is. But they forget that the civilian city — distinct from the plant — is also a first-order strategic stake. **Zaporizhzhia** is an industrial hub, a logistics centre, a rail node. Its fall, if it ever occurred, would constitute the most significant Ukrainian setback since the capture of **Mariupol** in **2022**.

*I am not a field officer. I do not have a military map in front of me. But I can read an ordinary geographic map — and that map tells me that the distance between Huliaipole and Zaporizhzhia is a physical reality that neither speeches nor official communiqués can erase.*

## February 2026: The Ukrainian Counter-Offensive That Turned the Tide

### 300 km² Reclaimed — But at What Cost

What **Ukraine's Air Assault Forces** accomplished in **January–February 2026** deserves to be stated plainly: they launched a counter-offensive in a difficult sector, in winter conditions, with limited resources, and they reclaimed **300 km²** of territory and **8 settlements**. Officially confirmed by the Ukrainian General Staff on **February 22, 2026**, this tactical success was largely ignored by Western media, which had already filed this front under "frozen." It was not frozen. It was changing hands in pain and blood.

The Ukrainian strategy in this sector relied on mobility, nighttime strikes, massive use of FPV drones to neutralize Russian observation posts, and precision artillery coverage of enemy supply lines. This is not magic — it is tactical competence developed in the fire of **four years of war**. These soldiers have learned to wage war in a way that no one could have imagined in **2022**. And they proved, once again, that the Ukrainian army is capable of initiative, not only resistance.

### Syrskyi's Visit: Political Signal and Ground Reality

On **March 15, 2026**, General **Oleksandr Syrskyi**, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, personally traveled to the **Huliaipole** sector. This is not a routine trip. A commander-in-chief does not visit a "stable" sector — he visits one under pressure, whose troop condition, line integrity, and resource needs he wants to evaluate himself. His presence was confirmed by Ukrainian military sources and relayed by specialist media. It constitutes a clear political signal: this front exists, it matters, it is monitored at the highest level.

But **Syrskyi**'s visit does not resolve the fundamental question: with what resources can **Ukraine** hold a **Zaporizhzhia** front under maximum pressure while simultaneously defending **Pokrovsk**, **Toretsk**, **Kherson**, and the front line north of **Kharkiv**? The honest answer is that no one knows with certainty. What is certain is that every week without additional heavy arms deliveries is a week in which the balance grows more precarious.

*Syrskyi's visit to Huliaipole on March 15 reminded me of something generals know better than anyone: you do not visit a front to do communications. You visit it because you no longer trust the reports you are receiving. It is a signal of concealed anxiety, dressed up as a gesture of support.*

## 32 to 40 Engagements a Day: The Raw Reality of the Huliaipole Sector

### Figures That Speak When Words Fall Silent

The combat figures in the **Huliaipole** sector speak for themselves: between **32 and 40 tactical engagements** per day, according to data compiled by the Ukrainian General Staff in daily reports from **June 2026**. To put those figures in context: the **Pokrovsk** sector, regularly cited as the most intense in the conflict, records comparable numbers. **Huliaipole** is therefore not a secondary front in fact — only in media perception. That is a distinction that costs lives, because an under-covered front is an under-funded, under-equipped, under-reinforced front.

Behind each "tactical engagement" in these dry statistics are men fighting in trenches, armoured vehicles destroyed, wounded evacuated under fire, positions taken and then retaken within the same day. The Russian **5th Combined Arms Army** is pushing toward **Verkhnia Tersa** as an intermediate stage before **Orikhiv**. Every metre gained or lost in those fields represents a human unit of suffering and resistance that strategic maps cannot render.

### The Mechanics of Sustained Pressure

Russian doctrine on this front is not about lightning strikes. It is about **systematic attrition**. The Russian army sends successive assault waves — often composed of poorly trained conscripts and Wagner-list soldiers, recycled into semi-regular units — to identify weak points in Ukrainian defences. It absorbs massive losses knowing that human replacement, however abominable, remains available in the short term. The goal is not to break through in a single day. It is to **wear down** the defenders until the line collapses on its own.

Facing this mechanic, **Ukraine** has developed a hybrid response: rapid rotation of elite units, deployment of FPV drones as the first alert and destruction layer, accelerated fortification of second defensive lines, and precision strikes to disrupt Russian concentrations before they reach the contact line. This response works — up to a certain level of pressure. And the question is whether that level will be crossed before reinforcing arms deliveries arrive.

*Russia's attrition doctrine is well known, documented, and repeatedly described. What escapes me is why the West continues to calibrate its aid based on what Putin will accept, rather than on what Ukraine needs in order not to be worn down. I ask that question without rhetoric. I genuinely want to understand the logic.*

## Orikhiv: The City Nobody Wants to Name as the Final Objective

### An Underestimated Strategic Node

**Orikhiv** is a medium-sized city — about **14,000 inhabitants** before the war — devastated since **2022**, largely evacuated, but strategically indispensable. It controls a road and rail junction that feeds the entire north of the **Zaporizhzhia** region. Its capture by Russia would open a south-westward corridor that would considerably strengthen Russia's ability to directly threaten the city of **Zaporizhzhia**. This is not a hypothesis — it is the reading of Ukrainian military planners and the analysts following this front.

Yet **Orikhiv** is not in the headlines. It is not on the posters at **Ukraine** support conferences. It is not in specific arms delivery requests. It is a name that circulates in military reports, in analyst discussions, in briefing sessions. But it has not acquired the symbolic notoriety of **Mariupol** or **Bakhmut**. And that invisibility makes it vulnerable in a way that military defence alone cannot compensate.

### The Stepnohirsk Risk: The Ignored Outpost

Midway between the current contact line and **Orikhiv**, the town of **Stepnohirsk** has become, according to Ukrainian military sources cited in **June 2026**, an explicit Russian target — with a capture order assigned for the end of **June 2026**. If that information is accurate, it indicates that the Russian army is working to a staged advance plan, not a direct assault. **Stepnohirsk** first. Then **Verkhnia Tersa**. Then **Orikhiv**. Then the approaches to **Zaporizhzhia**.

This logic of advance through intermediate objectives is militarily rational and formidably difficult to counter when defensive resources are limited. Each captured intermediate objective becomes a launching pad for the next. The Russians know this. The Ukrainians know this. What I am not certain I see in the Western capitals is an awareness that this plan exists and is being executed — not in the future, but **now**.

*I read the captured Russian orders cited by Ukrinform — capture Stepnohirsk before the end of June. I do not know whether those orders were carried out. But the very fact that this objective was planned, put in writing, distributed to units on the ground — that is intelligence that should feature in every NATO meeting. Is it? I hope so.*

## What This War in Zaporizhzhia Says About Putin's Overall Strategy

### Zaporizhzhia as Symbol of an Annexation Never Renounced

**Putin** "annexed" the **Zaporizhzhia** region in **September 2022**, in a ceremony the entire world refused to recognize. But in the **Kremlin**'s logic, this annexation is not symbolic — it is an existential commitment. **Putin** cannot, before his own people, abandon what he has declared to be **Russia**. The pressure on **Huliaipole** and **Orikhiv** is therefore not only a tactical manoeuvre — it is the implementation of a promise that cannot be withdrawn without domestic political collapse.

This means the pressure on this front will not cease as long as **Putin** remains in power, as long as his logistics teams are able to supply men and munitions, and as long as **Ukraine** is not sufficiently armed to inflict costs high enough to deter any further advance. The question is not whether Russia will stop of its own accord on the **Zaporizhzhia** front. The answer is no. The question is how to make that advance costly enough to become unsustainable.

### A War of Attrition That Ukraine Refuses to Lose

What **Ukraine** has demonstrated in the **Zaporizhzhia** sector since **2022** — and more particularly since **December 2025** — is a **capacity for resistance and counter-offensive** that no one should minimize. Reclaiming **300 km²** in winter, in difficult logistical conditions, against an army that has thrown all its resources at this axis, is not a matter of luck. It is the result of an army that has learned, that has adapted, that has trained its officers in real combat rather than in manuals. That army deserves weapons equal to its competence.

What I am saying to Western leaders in this letter is simple: **stop looking only at the fronts that make the headlines**. Zaporizhzhia exists. **Huliaipole** exists. **Orikhiv** exists. And the road to **Zaporizhzhia** — a city of **700,000 people** that no one can afford to see fall — runs through those localities you may not know how to spell. Ukraine needs support on those fronts too. Not tomorrow. Now.

*I am not a military strategist. I do not claim to have solutions that generals do not. But I can read a map, add up distances, and understand that 98 km between Orikhiv and Zaporizhzhia is not a sufficient geographical buffer when the Russian army is advancing at the pace it has maintained since December 2025. It seems to me this deserves attention proportional to what is at stake.*

## My Letter to the Western Chancelleries: Three Precise Demands

### Name Zaporizhzhia in NATO Meetings

First demand: name the **Zaporizhzhia front** explicitly in **NATO** discussions, in **Ukraine** support conferences, in the strategic assessments produced by the think tanks you fund. A front that is not named is a front that is not properly equipped. Political visibility is a precondition for resource mobilization. **Huliaipole**, **Orikhiv**, **Stepnohirsk**, **Zaporizhzhia** — these names must enter the daily strategic vocabulary of Western decision-makers, not remain confined to the intelligence reports read by a handful of specialist analysts.

There is nothing sensational about this demand. It is not a call for escalation. It is a call for **consistency**: if you say you support **Ukraine** in its territorial defence, then defending **Zaporizhzhia** against structural pressure must be as explicitly among your priorities as defending **Kharkiv** or protecting the border with **Poland**.

### Accelerate Heavy Arms Deliveries to This Sector

Second demand: supply priority for **long-range artillery systems**, **anti-armour munitions**, and **mobile air defence** for the **Zaporizhzhia** sector. The **February 2026** counter-offensive showed that the Ukrainian army can recover ground with the right tools. What it lacks is the capacity to indefinitely absorb Russian assault waves backed by artillery that still enjoys a superiority in ammunition volume. That superiority must be closed — not equalized, **closed**. Because an army defending its own territory against aggression does not need parity. It needs superiority.

The logic of "not provoking Russia" has cost two years of territory and tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives since **2022**. If that logic still applies to **Zaporizhzhia**, we are collectively going to watch — from our comfortable sofas — a Russian advance that will reach the outskirts of a city of **700,000 people** before anyone had the political courage to say: "We should have done more, sooner."

*The logic of "non-provocation" has been invoked to justify every delivery delay since 2022. Tanks, F-16s, long-range missiles — each time, the same arguments, the same delays, the same costs paid in Ukrainian lives. At what point do we decide that non-provocation is itself a form of complicity through inaction?*

## The Third Demand: Cover This Front — Ukraine Needs Visibility as Much as Weapons

### The Power of Narrative in a Modern War

In the wars of the **21st century**, visibility is a military resource. A front that does not exist in the media does not exist in defence budgets, does not generate popular pressure on governments, does not mobilize NGO donations, does not produce the reporting that sustains public solidarity. **Ukraine** has understood this better than anyone — **Zelensky** has been its undisputed master from the very first day of the invasion. But even he cannot cover everything simultaneously. And when **Huliaipole** is absent from the discourse, that absence is paid in unallocated resources.

The third demand in this letter is therefore addressed as much to journalists as to governments: **cover the Zaporizhzhia front**. Deploy correspondents to this sector. Request specific briefings on **Orikhiv** and **Stepnohirsk**. Publish the maps. Name the villages. Tell the stories of the soldiers holding this line under **32 to 40 assaults per day**. This is not sensationalism — it is accountability journalism. Journalism that recognizes that the visibility of a front is sometimes the only thing that keeps it in the political priorities of the countries that can help.

### The Collective Responsibility of Balanced Attention

There is no moral hierarchy between the Ukrainian soldiers defending **Pokrovsk** and those defending **Huliaipole**. There are no first-class and second-class Ukrainian lives based on how often their sector is mentioned on **CNN** or in **Le Monde**. Yet in practice, media attention creates a hierarchy of resources that no one would dare justify morally. It is this structural injustice that this letter wants to name — without accusing any one party in particular, because the reasons for this imbalance are multiple and complex. But naming it is the first step toward correcting it.

**Ukraine** is waging a **total war** along a front of more than **1,000 km**. Every kilometre of that front deserves attention proportional to the strategic stake it represents. **Zaporizhzhia**, with **Orikhiv** as the immediate target and a city of **700,000 people** as the backdrop, represents a first-order strategic stake. That reality deserves first-order coverage. And first-order resources.

*I am aware of the paradox in this demand: I am asking the media to cover Huliaipole more — in a piece that I am myself publishing about this front. That is one way to start. Imperfect, insufficient, but real. Every voice added to this conversation is one more in the tally of pressures that eventually move institutions.*

## Conclusion: Orikhiv Cannot Become the Next Name We Regret Not Having Remembered in Time

### The History We Write Through Our Silences

The history of this war will be, among other things, the history of what the **West** chose to see and not to see. It will be the history of the fronts named too late, the cities under-equipped until they fell, the reinforcements promised too slowly. **Mariupol**, **Lysychansk**, **Avdiivka** — those cities are in that history. And I refuse to add **Orikhiv** and **Zaporizhzhia** to it. I refuse to have, in ten years, to read the post-mortem analyses explaining why people failed to see what was in fact legible on every map available in **June 2026**.

This letter is not a cry of despair. It is a call for **clarity**. **Ukraine** is holding. The Ukrainian army is fighting with a competence and courage that surpasses anything anyone could have imagined in **2022**. But holding is not enough when the pressure is asymmetric and the resources are limited. Name the fronts we avoid naming. Equip the sectors we prefer to ignore. Support an army that is doing exactly what it was asked to do — defending **Europe** by defending its own territory. This is not generosity. It is enlightened self-interest.

### Sign This Letter With Me

I am only a columnist. My letter will not change arms orders, will not redeploy Ukrainian divisions, will not push back Russian assaults. But words, accumulated, repeated, amplified, eventually create a political pressure that even the most cautious governments cannot ignore indefinitely. So I ask you, those of you reading these lines: speak of **Orikhiv**. Speak of **Huliaipole**. Speak of the **Zaporizhzhia front**. Because a front that is named is a front that is defended.

*I have no certainty about the outcome of this front. Nobody does. What I have is the conviction that indifference is itself a choice — and that this choice carries consequences we will live with collectively, whether we want to or not. I would rather be wrong and have spoken too soon than be right and have stayed silent.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [EuroMaidan Press — Ukraine's Air Assault Forces officially reveal southern counter-offensive that reclaimed 300 km² and eight settlements — February 22, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/02/22/ukraines-air-assault-forces-officially-reveal-southern-counteroffensive-that-reclaimed-300-km%C2%B2-and-eight-settlements/)

- [EuroMaidan Press — Russians stall in Huliaipole — March 24, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/03/24/russians-stall-in-huliaipole/)

- [EuroMaidan Press — Russia concentrating its biggest push on Zaporizhzhia — March 15, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/03/15/russia-concentrating-its-biggest-push-on-zaporizhzhia/)

### Secondary sources

- [Ukrinform — War update: 260 clashes on front line, heavy fighting in Pokrovsk and Huliaipole sectors — June 9, 2026](https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4131851-war-update-260-clashes-on-front-line-over-past-day-heavy-fighting-in-pokrovsk-and-huliaipole-sectors.html)

- [Ukrinform — Russian troops ordered to capture Stepnohirsk by end of June — June 2026](https://www.ukrinform.net/amp/rubric-ato/4128573-russian-troops-ordered-to-capture-stepnohirsk-by-end-of-june-military-spokesperson.html)

- [EuroMaidan Press — Ukraine's drone output grew 12.7% month-on-month — June 11, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/11/ukraines-drone-output-grew-12-7-month-on-month-but-chief-commander-says-dont-relax/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-huliaipole-et-orikhiv-ce-front-qu-on-oublie-trop-souvent-ne-peut-