Live updates: Trump to meet Putin in Alaska to discuss Russia-Ukraine war

For Ukraine, the timing was dreadful. Days before the Alaska summit, Russia made a breakthrough in the eastern Donetsk region, near the strategic city of Pokrovsk.

The advance included a new Russian tactic: sending small groups of troops – often just five to 10 soldiers – to try to pierce Ukraine’s increasingly porous defenses.

On Tuesday, that tactic bore fruit: Ukrainian officials and monitoring groups reported that Russian forces had advanced near Dobropillia, a town north of Pokrovsk.

A Ukrainian commander near Pokrovsk, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told CNN that Ukraine’s defenses in the area mostly comprise two-man positions resupplied by drones alone.

Rather than two frontline trenches facing each other, much of the battlefield now consists of mostly hidden, isolated and small outposts, where infantry try to hold ground covertly, without being spotted by enemy drones.

This new type of face-off benefits Russia, with its superior manpower, enabling them to surge forwards in small groups, content to lose troops if they run into resistance, or reinforce any success.

The push towards Dobropillia likely represented an 11th-hour dash to snatch as much territory as possible before today’s summit.

But, in relief for Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said Thursday that the frontline near Dobropillia had been “stabilized.”

Ukraine had sealed off the front line, trapping the groups of Russian forces that had infiltrated, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of forces told CNN.

“The defense line has not been broken, and the strongholds holding it have not been destroyed – only temporarily suppressed,” Viktor Trehubov, Dnipro group forces spokesperson, said.