A year of "fierce" battles for a village where no one lives

This village has been on the frontline since the Russian invasion. Back in 2022, the Russian army stopped just a few kilometres away. Over three years, Russia has been slowly advancing toward it. A year ago, it reached the village outskirts and began a battle for Mala Tokmachka.

Mala Tokmachka, Zaporizhzhia oblast, was home to 3,000 people in 2001, the last time it was counted. In 2025, just three people were staying there. “Mala” in Ukrainian means small. “Big Tokmachka” is located 30km south, and is called Tokmak. Before the war, 30 thousand people lived there. Tokmak has been under Russian occupation since March 2022, and the whole Zaporizhzhia oblast was officially annexed by Russia through the unconstitutional referendum in 2022, despite Russia controlling less than half of it. 

The name Mala Tokmachka became known after an influencer noticed that a military expert, Boris Rozhin, on the show Bolshaya Igra (Big Game) on the Russian federal First Channel, mentioned the ongoing battle for Mala Tokmachka at least 22 times over the last year. According to Rozhin, the Russian army has been fighting for Mala Tokmachka since May 2025 and is about to “liberate” it very soon. The battle he characterises as “fierce" and every time says there's progress. 

In November 2025, the Minister of Defence of Russia, Andrey Belousov, even declared that Mala Tokmachka had been “liberated”, highlighting its strategic importance for further advancement at Orikhiv, a city where, before the war, a little less than 14,000 people lived. Now, Orikhiv is the centre of Ukrainian logistics in Zaporizhzhia.

Just a few weeks after proclaiming Mala Tokmachka "liberated", Rozhin again mentioned the continuous battle for it, without explaining why Russia is fighting for what is already occupied. Russian Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, however, have said that fighting is already on the streets of Orikhiv.

This is the media strategy used by the Russian military when they declare an area taken before actually establishing full control and fortifying it. Sometimes they simply send a group of a few soldiers to the Ukrainian rear to put a flag, film it with a drone and later show to commanders or air it on TV proclaiming the victory. Last year, such boasting led to embarrassment, when just a few days after Russian state media and, personally, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the city of Kupyansk “liberated”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy recorded a video in the city’s surroundings. 

According to the Ukrainian team, DeepState, which is gathering information about changes on the frontline, the Russian army is now trying to advance in the east of the village.

In the big media, Mala Tokmachka appeared only once, after the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive to the East of it in the summer of 2023. Ukraine, then, lost up to 23 tanks and many soldiers. But other than that, it was just another point on a thousand-kilometre-long frontline.

Although Channel First learned about Tokmachka only in 2025, a few other Russian pro-Kremlin media outlets have been reporting on the village's upcoming capture since 2024.

The main obstacle to capturing Mala Tokmachka, according to Russian pro-war media, is the prison in the Southeast of the village. Some of them say the Ukrainian army dug up huge tunnels under it. Satellite images show that the prison is now in ruins. Several open source intelligence teams assume the prison is in the grey zone.

Throughout the war, this village, 8km² large, has been bombarded by missiles, drones and bombs. The houses are destroyed, and the soil pitted by explosions. Comparing satellite images from the spring of 2021 and the spring of 2026 shows massive destruction of buildings around the prison and on the whole territory of Mala Tokmachka. Multiple blast craters are seen in the fields south of the village. The land around the houses that, in April, was usually already dug and prepared to plant crops in 2026 is empty, and weeds grow there. 

On the frontline, there are hundreds of Mala Tokmachkas: on the border in Sumy and Kharkiv, in the remaining uncaptured parts of Donetska and Luhanska oblasts, just a few kilometres to the East and West from Mala Tokmachka in Zaporizhzhia. Every day, Russia sends troops to storm them, and Ukraine tries to hold.

In April, the Russian army lost the most land since 2024, but the fight for Mala Tokmachka itself, or what’s left of it, continues.

Feature image: "Odradokamianka after Russian bombing, 2023-06-01 (01)" by Kherson Regional State Administration is licensed under CC BY 4.0.