A video compilation of statements by pro-Kremlin pundit Boris Rozhin about the Russian military’s endless assault on the village of Mala Tokmachka in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region surfaced in mid-April and quickly became the most popular military meme so far in 2026. The village’s name had already appeared regularly in dispatches from Russian milbloggers as “nearly cleared” — week after week, month after month. As the meme evolved, it took on a range of meanings, becoming a commentary on the lies of Russian military officials and their blogger allies, and a symbol of the senselessness of a war in which hundreds of lives have been spent fighting over a single small village. The name has also been used as shorthand for the gap between the Russian military’s ambitions and its capabilities (“We’ll take Tokmachka — then we march on Europe”). Ukrainian media outlets and bloggers, meanwhile, have turned Mala Tokmachka into a symbol of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ resilience. By their count, the battle has lasted more than 1,500 days, ostensibly longer than any successful defense in world history. Meduza examines how Mala Tokmachka became so significant to both Moscow and Kyiv.
If Mala Tokmachka symbolizes anything about the wider war in Ukraine, it’s the peculiarities of Russian military planning. Even along a stretch of front that has not been decisive for either side since at least 2024, and where Russia’s forces hold no resource advantage, Moscow continues to assign troops unrealistic offensive objectives. Even so, the area around the village could become a new flash point within months, if a large Russian force advancing from the east reaches it.
When and how did the front reach Mala Tokmachka? And who’s been fighting there all this time?
Mala Tokmachka is an eastern suburb of Orikhiv, a Ukrainian Armed Forces “fortress city” in the central part of the Zaporizhzhia region. Russian forces reached Orikhiv as early as the spring of 2022, but failed to capture either it or its suburbs, which include Mala Tokmachka and Novodanylivka. The front then stabilized to the south and east of the city. Since the summer of 2022, Russia has focused on seizing the Donbas, while the 58th Combined Arms Army dug in along a broad defensive front stretching from the Dnipro River to the outskirts of Orikhiv.
In early 2023, the Ukrainian military began developing plans for a major offensive. The operation was intended to turn the tide of the war decisively in Kyiv’s favor. Unlike Russia, Ukrainian planners chose the Zaporizhzhia region — not the Donetsk region — as their primary axis of attack. The goal was ambitious: cut the land corridor between the Donbas and Crimea, reach the Sea of Azov, and push Russian forces back behind the Crimean isthmuses.
The main thrust by two recently formed army corps (up to 12 brigades), equipped in part with newly delivered Western weapons, would be aimed south of Orikhiv, toward the Russian-held village of Robotyne. And Mala Tokmachka became one of the primary staging areas for these Ukrainian formations.
The offensive, which began in early June 2023, failed. Only by September — after committing the second echelon, which had originally been intended for a post-breakthrough march to the Sea of Azov — did Ukrainian forces capture the ruins of Robotyne. In the triangle formed by Mala Tokmachka, Verbove, and Robotyne, Ukrainian brigades lost hundreds of armored vehicles. But the Russian regiments of the 42nd Motor Rifle Division of the 58th Army — based in Chechnya — also suffered heavy losses defending the sector. Moscow dispatched units from two airborne divisions to reinforce them. Together, they held the front south of Robotyne until Russia’s major Donbas offensive began in October 2023.
The Ukrainian force assembled for the operation was then disbanded. Most of the brigades from around Orikhiv were redeployed north of Donetsk — toward Avdiivka, where a Russian breakthrough was beginning to take shape. By 2024, only two Ukrainian mechanized brigades remained near Orikhiv — the 118th (formed in 2023) and a second mechanized brigade. The regiments of Russia’s 42nd Division went on the offensive, supported by airborne units, and gradually — at heavy cost — pushed Ukrainian forces out of Robotyne. The paratroopers were then withdrawn from this sector of the front; they ultimately ended up in the Kursk region to turn back Ukraine’s surprise incursion. By mid-2024, the front had stabilized south of Mala Tokmachka and Novodanylivka, a southern suburb of Orikhiv.
From that point on, the 118th Mechanized Brigade defended Mala Tokmachka against the 70th Motor Rifle Regiment of the 42nd Division, while a second Ukrainian brigade defended Novodanylivka against the 71st Motor Rifle Regiment. Fighting throughout this period remained low in intensity: the sector gradually lost its earlier significance for both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries.
What’s happening there right now?
In early 2025, Russian commanders decided to launch a major offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. The plan was to support the Vostok Group of Forces’ main thrust from the Donetsk region along the border of the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions toward Hulyaipole and Orikhiv. The 58th Army would provide that support through offensives against Orikhiv from the west — from the direction of the Dnipro River — and from the south, from the direction of Robotyne. The 42nd Division’s push from Robotyne was a supporting effort.
In April 2025, the 70th Regiment of the 42nd Division — reinforced by units from the 270th “reserve” regiment, newly formed in Chechnya at the start of the year — reached the southeastern edge of Mala Tokmachka. That moment — a little more than a year ago — can be taken as the start of the battles for what is now a famous village.
Stretching nine kilometers (5.6 miles) from west to east along the Konka River, Mala Tokmachka proved a difficult target for the limited forces of the 70th Motor Rifle Regiment. The 42nd Division, which had not taken part in active combat for some time, had not mastered the “advanced” tactics of infiltration by small infantry groups; as in 2024, the assault relied on small armored groups whose task was to deliver assault troops to enemy positions and then withdraw — often leaving vehicles burning in the fields.
The second phase of the Russian subsidiary offensive against Novodanylivka and Mala Tokmachka began in October 2025, coinciding with Russian advances on Orikhiv from the west and east. Mechanized elements of the 42nd Division’s 70th and 71st regiments managed to break through in a single thrust to the center of Novodanylivka and — through the entire village — to the western edge of Mala Tokmachka. That was when Russian bloggers close to the 70th Regiment’s commanders began reporting that Mala Tokmachka was “undergoing its final clearing.”
But October also brought a counterattack by the 118th Mechanized Brigade. Ukrainian commanders exploited Russian forces’ exposed position between the Konka River to the north and tree lines to the south — well within range of every drone operator stationed in Orikhiv. The precise course of the fighting is unknown. Based on video published by the 118th Brigade, a significant portion of the Russian equipment was knocked out, and some of the assault troops who had broken through to the village’s western edge were taken prisoner. A similar pattern played out on the southern approaches to Orikhiv at Novodanylivka, where the 71st Motor Rifle Regiment sustained losses.
The unsuccessful assault — notable for its reliance on outdated tactics — drew the attention of researchers, even as Russian sources continued to report on the “final clearing” of both villages.
By November, the battle’s outcome had become clear: Russian sources were publishing footage of strikes on Ukrainian positions throughout Mala Tokmachka — meaning Russian forces had failed to consolidate any hold there. Since then, Russia’s military has not attempted to storm the village or advance through it toward Orikhiv. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, have continued local counterattacks, securing positions south of Mala Tokmachka and on the northern bank of the Konka.
The 19th Motor Rifle Division of the 58th Army — which had been trying, together with reinforcing airborne units from two divisions, to push through to Orikhiv from the west — also ran into a major Ukrainian counterattack. The Vostok Group of Forces, advancing on Orikhiv from the east through Hulyaipole, beat back a Ukrainian counterattack on its northern flank in early spring and, in April and May 2026, resumed its advance toward Orikhiv. The group’s forward elements have now captured Charyvne and Hulyaipilske, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to the northeast of Mala Tokmachka.
Within weeks, this offensive could force the 118th Brigade to thin its defenses against the 70th Regiment and shift its attention toward the Russian advance from the northeast.
What does Mala Tokmachka as a meme actually tell us?
We can say this much: The battle for the village has not broken any historical records for length, and it has not involved tens of thousands of troops — unless you count the months-long Ukrainian offensive south of the village in 2023. And even capturing Mala Tokmachka would not fundamentally alter the operational picture in the Zaporizhzhia region in Russia’s favor.
“Mala Tokmachka” translates roughly to “the little pounding ground” — a name that reflects the nature of the fighting along most of a front that stretches nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles). Alongside the “decisive battles” in the Donbas, there are dozens of stretches where the same units fight exhausting battles for their own “mala tokmachkas” — in the forests near the Sumy border, north of Kharkiv, at the junction of Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Luhansk, and on the Dnipro islands near Kherson. These battles rarely make headlines or appear in operational summaries, but troops there are regularly ordered to capture villages and launch counterattacks, paying a heavy price for minor gains. These local engagements matter no less to the outcome of this war of attrition than the battles that make headlines.
