By Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Wednesday that its forces were advancing north inside the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk and clearing out Kyiv’s troops in a drive to take full control of what has been an important transport and logistics hub for the Ukrainian army.
Ukraine has acknowledged its troops face a difficult position in the strategic eastern city, which Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year, but denies they are surrounded and says reinforcements are on their way.
Russia sees the city as the gateway to its capture of the remaining 10%, or 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) of Ukraine’s eastern industrial Donbas region, one of its key aims in the almost four-year-old war.
“Assault groups of the 2nd and 51st armies continued to destroy surrounded Ukrainian Armed Forces units in the residential area of the Prigorodny microdistrict, in the eastern part of the Central District and in the private sector (where there are residential houses),” the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement.
“The offensive in the northern direction continues,” it added, saying its forces were also clearing Ukrainian troops from settlements on Pokrovsk’s southeastern flank and had repelled numerous Ukrainian attempts to break out of encirclement.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that fierce fighting was under way in a part of Pokrovsk that was key for Kyiv’s frontline logistics and that additional special forces had arrived there, with more weapons and equipment being sent.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the situation in Pokrovsk on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday the area around Pokrovsk remained under severe pressure but up to 300 Russian servicemen still in the city had made no gains in the past day and there were just 60 in another city, Kupiansk.
The Russian Defence Ministry said either he had no grasp of what was happening on the ground or he was deliberately trying to conceal the parlous situation for Kyiv’s forces.
Ukrainian units were trapped in “cauldrons” in both locations, it said, and their position was deteriorating rapidly while Russian forces advanced, “leaving no chance for Ukrainian servicemen to save themselves other than by voluntary surrender”.
Reuters was unable to verify either side’s battlefield assertions.
PLATFORM TO DRIVE NORTH
Capturing Pokrovsk would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. It would also give Moscow its most important single territorial gain inside Ukraine since it took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.
In a break with the frontal assaults which Russian forces have used against other cities, Russia has used pincer movements to almost encircle Ukrainian forces in both Pokrovsk and the city of Kupiansk while small highly-mobile units and drones disrupted logistics and sowed chaos behind Ukrainian lines.
Russia’s tactics in both locations have created what Russian military bloggers call a grey zone of ambiguity where neither side had full control, but which was extremely difficult for Ukraine to defend.
Battlefield maps show that Russian forces are a few kilometres away from fully encircling Pokrovsk, known by Russia as Krasnoarmeysk, and control a significant part of Kupiansk where they are advancing on the main road to the city.
Pokrovsk, a road and rail hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. But most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated and few civilians remain amid its pulverised apartment buildings and cratered roads.
As well as trying to take the whole of Donbas, Russia has been making gradual advances in the Kharkiv and Dnipopetrovsk regions further west.
Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19% of Ukraine, or some 116,000 square km (44,800 square miles).
Ukrainian maps also show Russian control at around 19% of Ukraine, up 1% from Moscow’s position two years ago.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge/Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Philippa Fletcher)
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