The lines in kupyansk, gorlovka, grodovka, krasnogorovka, ugledar are all bending very hard.

Ukraine is supposedly mobilizing more soldiers since avdeevka was lost in February, ocheretyne was lost in March, Russians pushed slightly in kharkov in May, krasnogorovka has been taken in July...

But those troops don't really arrive, so Ukraine keeps trading land for time.

The issue is Russians are using that trade to advance on strategic areas, like towards pokrovsk or to envelop Ukrainian forces in front of gorlovka