Ukrainian Army reports thousands of artillery shells fired as Russians advance in southeastern Zaporizhia region.
Published On 12 Nov 2025
Ukraine’s top military commander has conceded that the army’s situation has “significantly worsened” in parts of the southern Zaporizhia region, where Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from five villages after intense fighting against Russian troops.
News of the setback in Zaporizhia in southeastern Ukraine comes as Russia said earlier on Tuesday that its forces had pushed deeper into the eastern Ukrainian cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk.
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Video footage published by Russian war bloggers shows Moscow’s troops riding motorcycles, travelling in battered cars and sitting on top of military vehicles as they poured into Pokrovsk, which Russian media has dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” due to its strategic location.
“Using its numerical superiority in personnel and materiel, the enemy advanced in fierce fighting and captured three settlements,” the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskii, said of the fighting in Zaporizhia on Tuesday.
“The situation has significantly worsened in the Oleksandrivka and Huliapole directions,” Syrskii said in a statement.
The Ukrainian Army said earlier that orders to withdraw from five villages in Zaporizhia were given after the “de facto destruction of all shelters and fortifications” following intensive Russian artillery strikes. An estimated 2,000 shells were launched at the Ukrainian positions.
Control of three other villages is also being hotly contested between Russian and Ukrainian forces northeast of the town of Huliapole in Zaporizhia, according to the Ukrainian Army.
Syrskii said that Russian forces in Zaporizhia had used poor weather conditions to their advantage, advancing under heavy fog to