By Nick Paton Walsh, Victoria Butenko, Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN
(CNN) — It is the fate of just one town, over a year, but provides a rare insight into Russia’s ill-fated war of choice.
The slow and costly infiltration of Kostyantynivka, key to Moscow’s advance in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas and claimed as occupied by the Russian defense ministry on July 3, lays bare the persistence of the Kremlin’s forces and the devastating casualties they will tolerate to obtain even the smallest of goals.
On July 3, the Ministry of Defense posted a series of videos of Russian troops at various points inside the town’s center, waving Russian flags, to bolster its assertion they had taken the town. The false claim – contradicted by recent videos, testimony from Ukrainian troops, and independent mapping of the frontlines – was one of several made in past months by Russia’s leaders, seeking to suggest their battlefield progress was greater than it is, to perhaps persuade their domestic audience, or counterparts in the White House, that their military campaign had not stalled.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky swiftly seized on the falsehood, and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him in the town to talk peace, if indeed it was under Moscow’s control.
CNN, which has reported in or near Kostyantynivka twice over the past year, has used geolocated videos and testimony, to show the horrific cost and slow pace of the Russian advances that led up to the false claim of the town’s capture. The town’s fate exposes both the dogged, relentless nature of Moscow’s assault, and the relatively minute nature of the victories it claim, even if falsely.
July 29, 2025
Mapping by the independent Ukrainian analysts Deep State shows Russian forces outside the town, trying to push in. The road into the town is already lined with fishing nets, to protect traffic from Russian attack drones. Cars safely drive into town and the market, in its center, remains busy, despite the occasional threat of drones.
A CNN team that visited in July last year, found streets bustling with civilians, although some were reluctant to be filmed, perhaps fearing future Russian occupation and being sanctioned for “cooperating” with Western media.
November 2025
By the first winter months, the map shows the so-called gray zone of disputed territory edging closer to the town center. Russia’s assault with airstrikes had escalated. Videos posted by Ukrainian forces show apartment blocks in the town’s southwest in flames.
And a Russian drone captures the damage caused by an airstrike, just a few streets away.
But the Ukrainians are still confidently inside the town center, with the General Staff posting a video of one officer casually standing in Victory Square in November.
Russian footage posted from that time shows what appears to be their infantry’s point of view from inside an apartment complex courtyard, off the town’s Gromov Street, on the southwestern edges again.
January 2026
It is in the latter days of the year that Russia appears to take its largest steps forward, recorded by Deep State in the first week of 2026. The gray zone has reached the to