SITREP 5/2/25: Major Frontline Breakthrough Signals Start of Russian Spring Offensives

There is a lot of news buzzing about today regarding the so-called ‘mineral deal’ and the tiresome retreads of US ‘pulling out of mediations’ in Ukraine. At this point, it’s safe to say most of this chaff is nothing but that—a red herring meant to propagate the image of US as ‘in charge’ and taking ‘initiative’ in leading the world. It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors and noise at this point, clatter meant to distract from mounting Russian military successes.

The real consequential news as always came from the front, where Russian forces made a series of shock breakthroughs in the Pokrovsk direction, signaling a true start of wider Spring offensives. The most notable of which came by way of an instructive video showcasing some of the tactics oft-discussed here.

First the description:

Exemplary storming of Novoolenivka caught on video

First, the drones knocked out the armored vehicles: you can see how the drones burn the BMP-1TS, the Bogdana self-propelled guns and a mortar. When the Russian Armed Forces attack troops appear, the [AFU] try to gain a foothold, but the drones destroy the houses where they are hiding one after another. Abandoning the dead and wounded, the enemy ran from house to house until they found themselves on the outskirts of Novoolenivka and ran away.

Note specifically the 0:34 mark of the video, wherein a large cluster of Russian moto-troops storms the enemy positions in a daring rendition of Mad Maksim:

The breakthrough was quite significant—this is what the DeepState map looked like just four short days ago:

DeepState map as of 4/29/25

Now a huge jump of 6km+ is recorded with this advance into Novoolenovka:

And that is not the only one on this front—check the yellow circles above notating Stara Mykolaivka’s breach.

Nearby on the right flank of Mirnograd, Russian forces of the 255th Regiment of the 20th Motor Rifle Division were likewise filmed successfully storming Ukrainian positions:

🇷🇺🔥🇺🇦A fearless assault troops from the 255th regiment breaks into a Ukrainian Armed Forces dugout near Pokrovsk and clears it out!

▪️During the attack on the Mirnograd right, our soldier throws a grenade and then breaks into the enemy's fortified position, firing from a machine gun.

▪️Fighters of the Volgograd 255th Regiment attack and capture positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, moving forward.

RVvoenkor

In the same Konstantinovka direction, but further east near Chasov Yar, Russian forces stormed Stupochky, capturing most of the village:

One analyst writes:

Early in the war Ukraine could actively counter any Russian advances, as well as perform an impressive counter-offensive that took the Russians by surprise.

We’re currently at the stage where Ukraine no longer has this ability, they are in the stage I like to call the ‘plug’ stage. You see it with small Russian advances, 2-3km deep into Ukraine lines, forcing Ukraine to react by moving manpower, therefore plugging the gap and halting the Russians.

As a result of this the reserves that Ukraine has available is depleting, not being replaced at a fast enough rate. Obviously this is not being seen on the frontline as it is not an issue at the frontline. Only when the Reserve numbers are low enough to force Ukraine to decide which ‘plugs’ are worth doing will we start to see a collapse.

Ukraine themselves are fast tracking this with the Kursk offensive, Belgorod debacle, and likely future poor decisions.

These advances are facilitating the creation of a large cauldron between Pokrovsk and Toretsk, with several mini-boilers inside of it:

Russian troops will likely march along the main T-0504 highway just north of Novoolenovka above, slowly shutting the lid on the giant cauldron below, forcing a collapse of Ukrainian defenses around the yellow circles.

North of Donetsk, the Russian Armed Forces are collapsing two “pockets” along the Chasov Yar–Pokrovsk line across a wide front. At the same time, east of Pokrovsk, Russian assault units have cut off the logistics route from Konstantinovka to Pokrovsk and are now consolidating their positions by storming the settlements of Alexandropol and Novoolenovka.

There were many other smaller advances, too many to count and list here, including in the Velyka Novosilka direction, where Russian forces began to storm the village of Bagatyr:

Likewise, yesterday the village of Nove was fully captured in the north, on the Krasno-Liman line:

You’ll recall that in one of the last sitreps it was reported troops had only just begun storming the outskirts of this town, which is now entirely captured mere days later.

AMK_Mapping has published the territorial changes for the month of April, and they are significant for a month’s work, especially since Russian advancement seems to be accelerating only now. This is the Pokrovsk-Toretsk line:

And this is the northern theater:

An analysis of the increase in Russia’s territorial captures:

In one of the assaults, Ukrainian sources even admitted that Russia suffered few casualties:

▪️In the Mirnogoadsk direction (between Pokrovsk and Dzerzhinsk), a Russian armored group broke through to Malinovka.

➖"During the mechanized assault, a Russian MT-LB was hit in Malinovka. Other equipment that participated in this assault remained intact and continued to storm the village," write Ukrainian military analysts who geolocated the footage of the battles.

Interestingly, the yellow press continues to feed its audience outdated lies. Trump special envoy Keith Kellogg told an interviewer days ago that Russia hadn’t advanced at all in one and a half years. Now Forbes’ resident comedian David Axe crouched and excreted this howler for the ages:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/05/01/at-the-current-rate-it-would-take-russia-centuries-and-tens-of-millions-of-casualties-to-capture-ukraine/

His learned conclusion:

At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the year 2256 at the cost of 101 million casualties. The current population of Russia is 144 million.

One supposes this type of output was a contributing factor to Mr. Axe’s recent financial predicaments:

Of course, he’s not alone in his desperate attempt to color the methodical Russian steamroller as some kind of ‘flagging’ effort:

In reality, when you ‘zoom out’ far enough, it’s easy to characterize anything as ‘small’ or insignificant. In many ways what Axe and others are doing is Strawman-ing Russia’s intentions. Russia never said it would take over ‘all’ of Ukraine; nor did Axe bother calculating how many people Ukraine would lose in a few more years of fighting, let alone by that mythical year of 2256.

It’s going to be hard for Ukraine to make it to such a year while incurring losses like this one seen today at the ‘rear’ of Konstantinovka, 8-14km from the line:

Konstantinovka.
48°30.70898'N 37°44.09353'E
8 km from LOC

Top Ukrainian radio-electronics expert writes of the above hit:

A difficult video. The enemy is attacking our guys in Kostyantynivka with a drone on fiber optics, 14 km from the front line.

Konstakha, which has long been a home for many soldiers and for me too, is dying out before our eyes.

But the video is about something else. As I wrote, we need a warning system about drones flying over the optics. And until that happens, our guys have to constantly monitor the air. Even 15 km from the front line. Close windows and doors and cover their positions with nets as much as possible.

—

Now once again Ukrainian leaders are threatening terrorist actions to divert attention from their frontline woes. Several officials have recently ‘implied’ threats against Russia’s May 9th Victory Day parade. Striking the parade would be quite a foolhardy blunder, considering the presence of Chinese troops and delegation, amongst many others.

The SBU even released a new video threatening the destruction of the Kerch Bridge to coincide with Russian festivities:

—

To come back around to the front, a last more speculative development. I’ve reported for a while about claimed Russian buildups on the Dnieper in the Kherson region. Rumors had claimed since last year that Russia would attempt some kind of cross-border raid, particularly now that Russia has successfully established the bridgehead over the Oskil river in the Kharkov region. Granted, the Oskil is no Dnieper—measuring a mere 130-250ft across in sections. The Dnieper in the more hotly-contested zones is upwards of 2,000ft+ wide.

Even so, new rumors like the following persist:

I have received information about Russian accumulation in the red area (Kinburn Spit). Their objective is a serious landing operation somewhere in the Odessa Oblast' and the Ochakiv district. This is in accord with numerous reports of renewed Russian attacks on Tyahynka, Buhaz Island, and Kizomys. According to my contacts, the Ukrainians are currently closing some of the beaches in the area. I am not aware of any further information, but I'll wait and keep an eye on this. For now, don't panic around and spread doom posts, this is just my and my contacts' information.

Normally I would shy away from reposting such more speculative offerings, but if it weren’t for the fact that several independent accounts disseminated similar tips. For instance from top Russian military account RVvoenkor, which quotes a Ukrainian colonel:

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦The Russian army seeks to land on the islands of Bugaz and Kozulyisky opposite Kherson to force the Dnieper, - Armed Forces of Ukraine

▪️ Russian troops are trying to create a bridgehead near Kherson, Russians are trying to land on the islands, said the spokesman for the Southern Defense Forces, Colonel Voloshin.

▪️In the Kherson region, the Russian Armed Forces have become active in the south of the Dnieper Islands and are trying to seize a bridgehead near the village of Kizomis.

RVvoenkor

A wider shot of the indicated area, with Kherson at the center of the map:

If I had to make an educated guess about the play, I would say Russia is likely pressuring this area to fix Ukrainian units, keep them under constant threat, but no real immediate operation is planned. Russian Marines have been practicing river crossing here since last year and there is most likely a potential planned operation much deeper in the future.

Russian command would logically wait for such time when Ukrainian reserves have thinned, and the Russian ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy has begun overwhelming Ukrainian lines all across the front, forcing Ukraine into a desperate defensive strategy of ‘plugging gaps’ like never before. It is only then, with Kherson’s defenses thinned out, that Russia could attempt a mass storming across many different points of the Dnieper—which is the only way such an operation could feasibly work. Both the lower and upper Dnieper would likely be crossed in the same fashion as the Oskil has been in the north.

As a reference, here’s a timelapse of the growing Russian ‘bridgehead’ across the Oskil north of Kupyansk from about January 2025 to present. Note in particular how it starts with one bridgehead near Dvorichna, then expands to other independent ones further north, until even a third and fourth form at the very top of the map near the Russian border:

Some reports indicate the lower Dnieper is fairly shallow ever since the Khakovka dam destruction, while the further north you go the deeper it gets. It’s possible that if—and that’s a big if—the AFU is ever ground down to the point of truly thinned out lines, Russia could attempt crossings along several major points in conjunction with special operations and VDV air assault landings in key areas to scramble the rears of theater echelons of the AFU. Ultimately though, performing a cross river operation is the easy part—it’s supplying such a bridgehead long term that’s usually untenable; Ukraine learned that the hard way in Khrynki last year.

A few last notable items:

Famed Russian ‘pranksters’ (i.e. GRU agents) Vovan and Lexus have now caught beltway parasite Paul Massaro in their web. He made quite a few revealing statements, which convey the mood inside the halls of Washington.

First, he grumbled that Russia is preventing the US from being able to reorient toward China, a long-standing goal invariably delayed by Russia’s pesky intractability:

“Russia won’t let us pivot to Asia!” he whines.

Most revealing of all was his admission that Russian identity itself is the problem. In order to create a Russia more amenable to the West’s criminal ‘Rules Based Order’, Russia needs to be balkanized, as US attempted to do in the early ‘90s—per Massaro’s own words:

The full leak here.

—

May 2 is the anniversary of the Odessa massacre at the Trade Unions House, which occurred on May 2nd, 2014:

Journalist Andrei Medvedev writes:

May 2, 2014 is the first day of open war against the Russians, against Russia.
However, in May 2014, only a few people realized this. Ukraine began to prepare for war in the Donbas for real, and with Russia in the future. But we didn't change much then, did we?

Russian philosopher Konstantin Krylov adds:

"May 2 is the birthday of the Ukrainian nation.

...

What, in fact, happened? Ukrainians burned the Russians - or the people whom the nascent Ukrainian nation mistook for Russians. Burned - that is, subjected to the most painful execution known to mankind. Moreover, it was possible to enjoy not only the agony of the victims, but also their futile attempts to escape. This gave and still gives Ukrainians a special pleasure - being in safety, watching people flailing in the flames.

This safety, i.e. the complete impossibility of the people being killed to even spit at the killers, caused a particularly acute delight. No, it was not the thrill of battle, where the enemy had a chance - it was the thrill of a sadist who tortures a helpless victim in complete safety. And finally, the opportunity to kill maimed and burned people, who are no longer capable of any resistance, not even begging for help - this is the last, the sweetest note that touches a Ukrainian's soul.

Note: it is not about the scale of the event. In other times and other nations killed more, and Ukrainians themselves have advanced considerably since that time. What was important was this happy moment of recognition: the entire Ukrainian nation recognized itself in this truly national Ukrainian cause. All Ukrainians realized their essence, their desires, looked into the magic mirror and saw themselves there. Ukrainians got the DEFINITION - “we - those who burned Russians, we - those who rejoiced and reveled in the smell of burning Russian meat”. And it is true: even if not all Ukrainians were able to participate in the burning of Russians directly, but all enjoyed it.

And the flood of rapture - pure, uncontaminated rapture that swept through husbands and wives, children and elders, simpletons and intellectuals, all Ukrainians in general, all Ukrainians in general, as many as there are - was a legitimate reward for this moment of self-discovery.

Since then, this stream of delight has not dried up - and, most likely, will not dry up anymore. Thus, sharp or covert jokes about “fried kolorads” (ed: term for Russians wearing St. George Ribbons) and “May shish kebab” became a shibboleth, a way for Ukrainians to recognize their own. Anyone who on May night tasted this shish kebab of Russian meat, thereby became a part of Ukrainianism - and realizes it, realizes it with pride, with jubilant delight, and even with the feeling that he has stepped on a different ontological level. They were a rabble, a project, a crowd - but now they are a single entity, and a very successful one. Including our Russian Zaukrainians, who are part of the same nation, albeit second-rate, but they are honored.

Well, they are to be congratulated on that, if only out of politeness. And also because clarity is always good. The Ukrainian nation has finally come into existence - and it is exactly as it was on May 2, 2014.

It will remain exactly as it was on May 2, 2014.

And Medvedev again adds a final thought to the above:

In those days of May 2014, something important happened to many of us, here in Russia. It seems that for the first time we felt like Russians. Or, more precisely, we felt that we could not help but react to the murder of people in Odessa, we could not remain silent.

Starting from May 3, people in Moscow went with flowers to the Alexander Garden, to the Odessa memorial sign, and to the Ukrainian embassy. Yes, we were naive, for some reason we thought that for Ukraine this was a tragedy. That at the very least they would declare mourning. Yes, instead Ukraine began to joke about "Odessa-style shashlik". But we carried flowers, because for us what happened in the country whose embassy we were going to was a tragedy.

I remember that I arrived at the Ukrainian embassy, ​​a spontaneous memorial had already appeared there. There were even photographs of the dead hanging. I remember what different people were going to the memorial then. Families with children, elderly people, some completely informal youth, fans and National Bolsheviks. Military, civilians, workers, office clerks. I was parking my car, and a BMW "seven" stopped next to me. Out of it got a not-so-young, heavyset man, and a very attractive girl who could have been his daughter. However, she was unlikely to be a relative. They took flowers out of the trunk and also went to the embassy. At the memorial, the girl was crying, and the man was looking gloomily at the photographs of the dead. In our arrogance, we are usually accustomed to denying such people any kindness and responsiveness. Now, after three years of the SVO, we have become accustomed to the fact that very different Russian people can be united by one idea and goal. But then it was all strange to us.

But in Odessa, Russians were killed because they wanted to speak Russian and did not want to become Ukrainians. And we had an internal choice: either pretend that nothing happened, or remember that we are also Russians, and our brothers and sisters were killed there.

In those days, all over Russia, people were looking for a way to remember the dead. May 2, 2014, became something that, through compassion and involvement, made us one people again. Maybe not completely. Maybe not for long. But it was already an irreversible process.

This is the foul excrescence of history that Russia is waging a war against in Ukraine—a war that elevates above the mere material into the metaphysical realm. That is because this struggle has always been a spiritual one, an attempt to blot out the very civilizational ethos—or asabiyyah and sobornost—of a people, with Ukrainians being used merely as the dupes and battering ram in one. Russians sense the deeper metaphysical layers of this struggle, which emboldens their patriotism, swelling mobilization ranks. The more colorful of Russia’s ethnic cadres speak of it openly: for instance, Apti Alaudinov and the Chechens’ repeated invocation of the conflict as a holy war against ‘Shaitan’, signified by the corrupting West.

The above authors’ ruminations cast the Odessa massacre as a kind of ritual turning point, where Ukraine and Ukrainians had become unified by a truly misanthropic dark seed—the moment where they crossed the Rubicon forever. To this day a hateful glee fills many of them at the day’s grisly reminiscence, some kind of twisted darkness of the soul that most Russians can hardly begin to grasp. It is an undeserved cruelty toward a people that should have been, and once were, brethren.

But now it serves as an empowering reminder what the fight is for. This abomination has been allowed to molt into a terrible seething dragon, which must forthwith be lanced at all costs.

---

Your support is invaluable. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one.

Alternatively, you can tip here: buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius

---