‘Commanders don’t give a damn.’ A Ukrainian soldier reported leadership mistakes near Toretsk and Pokrovsk

The Russian offensive on the Toretsk and Pokrovske directions is being facilitated by numerous mistakes made by the Ukrainian command.

This was stated by Stanislav Bunyatov, a soldier from the “Aidar” battalion.

“Battalion commanders are not providing the true situation even to adjacent units, to later avoid responsibility. Some combat formations are disoriented. There are no well-coordinated operational plans between brigades, sometimes not even between battalions. The policy of commanders with ‘crowns on their heads’ is: ‘I have my area of responsibility, the rest doesn’t concern me,’ ‘who are you to teach me,'” Bunyatov writes.

According to his information, “some brigade/battalion commanders don’t care about anything and report false information,” which is then passed up the chain to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Syrskyi, who in turn reports it to Zelensky.

“These two directions are being held by a few brigade commanders, battalion commanders and company commanders who stay awake day and night, independently finding ways to coordinate with friendly units to somehow piece everything together,” Bunyatov writes and urges brigade commanders to establish communication among themselves.

Meanwhile, the head of the Pokrovske administration, Serhiy Dobriak, stated that local residents have a week or two to evacuate from the city, considering the progress of the Russian army in the Donetsk region.

“As of today, everything is still functioning in Pokrovske—all services, fully operational. That includes water, electricity, gas and public transport. Shops, markets, banks, courts, the State Migration Service and administrative service centers are all still working. But we understand that in a week, things will slowly start to shut down,” Dobriak said.

Currently, there are still 4,788 children in the Pokrovske community, which is one-third of the total number.

“I think that by the end of this week, we will have to resort to mandatory evacuation of the children as well,” said the head of the Civil-Military Administration (CMA).

Earlier, Bunyatov mentioned that in the Pokrovske direction, the Ukrainian Armed Forces “have exhausted units that are terrorized by aviation all day long and then stormed by infantry at a ratio of 10 to 1.”