Russia Grinds Toward Ukraine's 'Fortress Belt' as Ceasefire Collapses and Peace Talks Stall

Since U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner wrapped up their back-to-back visits to Moscow on Saturday, Sept. 5, and Kyiv on Sunday, Sept. 6, the three-day ceasefire that came out of those talks has already expired, and Russian strikes have picked back up across Ukraine, according to Fox News. Russia hit Kyiv with ballistic and cruise missiles on Tuesday when the ceasefire lapsed, damaging residential buildings in two districts and trapping people inside one building, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Witkoff called the trip productive. "Substantive progress was made, including movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks," he wrote on X, adding that President Trump "is working hard to stop the killing and work towards a lasting and durable peace." CNN, reporting from the ground, described the Kyiv visit as coming and going "without a major breakthrough." Both things can be true at once. American officials describe procedural movement toward future talks, while Ukrainians living under the bombs see no change in the war itself. Neither side has produced a signed agreement, and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky has previously said no deal on even limited terms, like sparing energy infrastructure, is confirmed.

While Washington shuttles envoys between capitals, the war on the ground has taken a darker turn in Ukraine's eastern "fortress belt." Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Kostyantynivka form the backbone of Ukraine's remaining defenses in Donetsk, and all three are now under sustained bombardment, according to the BBC. Kostyantynivka has only a limited Ukrainian troop presence left, the BBC reported, and Russia claims full control of it.

The numbers show a steady escalation. Ukrainian police data reviewed by the BBC show glide bomb strikes on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk jumped from 40 in June to 109 in July and 92 in August. Civilian casualties climbed alongside them: 70 wounded in June rose to 212 in August, while deaths ran 16 in June, 20 in July and 15 in August. On Aug. 25 alone, nine glide bombs hit Kramatorsk, seven of them striking apartment blocks and wounding 24 people, including a two-month-old baby, Ukrainian police told the BBC.

Donetsk police official Pavlo Dyachenko said forced evacuations of families with children have already begun in the worst-hit areas. "This is the only way to save your life," he said. A volunteer in Sloviansk, Viktor Makurin, told the BBC that anti-drone nets now cover key streets and that FPV drones lie in ambush along the roads.

Down in Kherson, the pattern is similar but the term is grimmer. Local officials say Russian attacks kill or injure roughly 20 people a day in the city, according to ABC News. It was in Kherson that the phrase "human safari" emerged to describe Russian drone operators hunting civilians for sport, footage of which regularly circulates on Russian military-aligned Telegram channels. The United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has said such attacks constitute crimes against humanity. Natalia Sergienko, a Kherson humanitarian worker, told ABC News she survived two close calls with drones in a single month, once diving into a basement to escape one hunting her near her office. "The basement saved me," she said.

Despite the intensity of the strikes, Russia's actual territorial gains remain slow, according to the Institute for the Study of War. ISW says Russian forces advanced or infiltrated about 124 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in August, roughly a quarter of what they took in the same month a year earlier. ISW analyst Jennie Olmsted told CNN that Russia is "conducting continued infiltration missions" toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and advancing in Kostyantynivka, but "at a really slow pace." At the current rate, ISW calculates Russia would not fully take Donetsk until 2032, if it can seize the region at all.

That slow pace is coming at a steep cost. Western intelligence services estimate Russia is losing roughly 40,000 troops a month, according to CNN, which works out to about 340 casualties for every square kilometer gained. Iryna Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine's 93rd mechanized brigade based in Kramatorsk, described the recent weeks as "insane," telling CNN that dozens of strikes now hit cars, homes and administrative buildings daily, and that residents in the city carry rifles to buy coffee because drones can strike at any moment.

Ukraine has not been purely on the defensive. Ukrainian drones struck three Russian oil refineries on Monday, Fox News reported, and a Ukrainian strike injured people and damaged civilian infrastructure in Russia's Saratov region Tuesday morning, according to that region's governor.

No ceasefire is currently in effect. Witkoff's reference to "additional trilateral talks" has no confirmed date attached to it in any of the reporting reviewed here, leaving open whether the diplomatic track produces anything before Russia's slow, costly grind through the fortress belt reaches its next flashpoint.