From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / November 7, 2025
In Pokrovsk, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fight from adjacent buildings in chaotic three-dimensional warfare. In occupied Mariupol, construction crews rebuild a theater atop mass graves where 600 civilians died. In Volgograd, flames consume Russia’s third-largest refinery after Ukrainian drone strikes. The 1,352nd day of war—when front lines dissolve into interpenetrating chaos and occupation becomes permanent infrastructure.
THE DAY’S RECKONING
The commander’s assessment arrived without euphemism: Russian forces had infiltrated “practically all over Pokrovsk such that Russian and Ukrainian positions are interspersed house-to-house.” The word captured what maps couldn’t—opposing forces in adjacent buildings, front lines existing vertically and horizontally, basements and rooftops mattering as much as east and west.
In Volgograd, 450 kilometers inside Russia, flames consumed the oil refinery’s processing units. Ukrainian drones had struck before dawn, crippling 5.6 percent of Russia’s refining capacity in a single night. The facility wouldn’t restart quickly. The CDU-5 unit and hydrocracker—critical infrastructure—lay in ruins.
In occupied Mariupol, the Drama Theater reconstruction was “more than 80 percent complete.” December opening planned. Nobody mentioned the 600 civilians who died when Russian bombs fell in March 2022, or the word “CHILDREN” painted outside. The theater would open atop a mass grave and Russian media would call it progress.
In Kherson, artillery struck a civilian bus. A 14-year-old girl was among the wounded.
In Moscow, Crimean Tatars completed a multi-day journey to submit a petition. Russian police stopped them five times. Hours of detention. They had 6,500 signatures requesting release of four women arrested on “extremism” charges. The petition wouldn’t matter. The harassment was the point.
In a Zaporizhzhia courtroom, a judge sentenced Russian soldier Dmitry Kurashov to life imprisonment. He had ordered Ukrainian prisoner Vitalii Hodniuk to kneel, then opened fire with a Kalashnikov. Hodniuk had raised his hands. He had surrendered. The execution was one of 322 documented cases where Russian forces killed Ukrainian soldiers after they’d laid down their weapons.
In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, power failed at eight coal mines. 2,595 miners were trapped underground in darkness, hundreds of meters below the surface. Russian strikes on energy infrastructure didn’t just damage facilities—they endangered thousands simultaneously.
In occupied Mariupol, a youth military training center neared completion: capacity for 300 children year-round. Tactical shelter. Drone training area. Shooting gallery. The Voin program had expanded tenfold in 2025, reaching 3,000 Ukrainian children. Russian veterans would teach them to shoot and operate drones. Some instructors were Ukrainian POWs—captured soldiers training occupied children for Russia’s military.
The day revealed war’s transformation beyond conventional combat. House-to-house infiltration where maps became obsolete. Railway closures. Billion-ruble investments in occupied infrastructure. Children militarized in camps staffed by captive enemy soldiers. Telecommunications restricted to force populations onto Kremlin platforms. Theaters rebuilt atop mass graves.
Not just combat. Transformation. The systematic conversion of occupied territory into permanent Russian space, of Ukrainian children into Russian soldiers, of war crimes into construction projects.
Day 1,352. The machinery ground forward.
THE HOUSE-TO-HOUSE WAR
September: 13 Russian assaults per day. November 6: 30 in a single day. The Ukrainian 7th Rapid Reaction Corps tracked the acceleration as Russian forces exploited infiltration gains through sustained pressure.
The General Staff documented 276 combat engagements across the entire front. One hundred occurred in Pokrovsk—more than one-third of all fighting in Ukraine concentrated in this single devastated town.
Ukrainian drone operators watched Russian forces adapt to weather. Poor visibility meant drones couldn’t hunt effectively. Russian troops gathered in larger groups, mounted motorcycles and buggies, raced through rubble-strewn streets. When drones appeared, they dispersed. When weather closed in, they advanced—bringing provisions, pushing deeper into northern Pokrovsk, targeting Ukrainian rear positions where mortar crews and drone pilots operated.
The infiltration had succeeded so thoroughly that positions were now interspersed house-to-house. Not a traditional front line. Three-dimensional warfare where Russian troops might occupy ground floors while Ukrainians held upper floors, where adjacent buildings could be controlled by opposing forces, where “forward” and “rear” became meaningless.
Russian forces had rotated through three complete replacements after suffering catastrophic losses over four months. Moscow committed Spetsnaz and naval infantry—elite formations, not mobilized conscripts—to consolidate gains.
Russian milbloggers claimed advances to the T-0515 highway and seizure of part of the Pokrovska Mine complex. Ukrainian officials continued reporting Russian forces disguising themselves as civilians—perfidy prohibited under Geneva Conventions, a war crime so routine it barely registered.
Voice of Ukraine 