Earlier this month, rumors spread that Russian troops had pierced Ukrainian defensive lines along a critical section of the eastern front. Soldiers spoke of night infiltrations, gunfire rattling in the distance and skirmishes near villages once considered secure.
The rumors quickly reached Ruslan Mykula and Roman Pohorilyi, the Ukrainian co-founders of DeepState, the group behind what has become the definitive online map charting battlefield movements. After a day of digging, the two men confirmed that the breach was real, and worse than initially thought, with Russian troops pushing nearly 10 miles forward.
“There was a very big problem,” Mr. Pohorilyi said in an interview, adding that Ukraine’s defenses in the area had been at risk of crumbling.
The pair knew that updating the map with the Russian advance would be politically explosive. With peace talks heating up, publicizing the breach risked weakening Ukraine’s hand in the negotiations. At the same time, it could force Kyiv’s top military command, which had so far been muted about the advance and seemingly slow to grasp its severity, to respond decisively.
On the evening of Aug. 11, they updated the map and posted a long message on social media explaining the “quite chaotic” situation. Screenshots of the map showing two long Russian incursions that looked like rabbit ears spread like wildfire in Ukraine, and the military, after initially downplaying DeepState’s assessment, quickly deployed elite troops to contain the breach.
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