Russian war correspondent Aleksandr Kots believes that the Russian Armed Forces’ capture of the village of Chervonoe will open up a new axis of advance toward Gulyai-Polye. In his view, this would allow Russian troops to place the town in a partial encirclement.

Kots explained that from Chervonoe it is possible to push south toward the village of Marfopol, which lies on the road leading to Gulyai-Polye from the southeast. He noted that taking Marfopol would give Russian forces access to the town from a new direction and make it possible to tighten a semicircle around it.

The correspondent also reported that troops from the «Vostok» group had successfully completed the destruction of encircled elements of Ukraine’s 102nd Territorial Defense Brigade. According to Kots, the Ukrainian side suffered heavy losses, with more than ten pieces of equipment destroyed and roughly a company of soldiers killed and wounded.

Military-focused channels argue that the situation for Ukrainian forces in Gulyai-Polye could turn out even worse than the loss of Krasnoarmeisk (the Ukrainian name is Pokrovsk). They point out that the continued advance of Russian units in Zaporozhye Region creates an opportunity to strike at the rear of the Ukrainian grouping in Orekhovo, a town that played a key role in the failed 2023 counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.