RMoscow has announced that US forces have advanced on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, as the country seeks its most significant territorial gains in nearly two years.
About 100,000 Russian troops are encircling Pokrovsk, a city Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which Vladimir Putin has long sought full Russian control over.
Kiev’s army says it is being pushed back in force, but battlefield maps show Russian forces advancing. A military analyst has warned that Ukraine will soon have to decide whether to withdraw troops from the city of Mirnohord, a city close to being surrounded by Russian forces.
Below are key facts about Pokrovsk, which Russians call by its Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmisk, and the long battle for its control, which began in earnest in mid-2024.
Where is Pokrovsk?
Pokrovsk is a road and rail center in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region with a pre-war population of about 60,000. Most of the people have now fled, all the children have been evacuated, and a few civilians remain among the pulverized apartment buildings and sunken roads.
The city is located on a key road used by the Ukrainian military to supply other involved bases.
Map of Pokrovsk:
The only mine producing coking coal in Ukraine – used in its once large steel industry – is about six miles (10 km) west of Pokrovsk. A technical university in Pokrovsk, the largest and oldest university in the region, is now abandoned and damaged by shelling.
Emil Kasthelmi, a military analyst at the Finnish open-source intelligence organization Blackbird Group, says that Pokrovsk is no longer of the strategic importance it once was due to heavy fighting and considerable destruction in the city.
“Right now it’s a battlefield full of destroyed buildings. So the role of Pokrovsk is that Ukraine is trying to hold the city so that it can keep the Mirnohord Corridor open to delay the Russian advance as much as possible,” he said.
Why does Russia want Pokrovsk?
Russia wants to take the entire Donbas region, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still holds about 10 percent of Donbass — an area of about 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles) west of Donetsk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Donbass is now legally part of Russia. Kiev and most Western countries reject Moscow’s occupation of this territory as an illegal land grab.
The capture of Pokrovsk, dubbed the gateway to Donetsk by Russian media, and Kostyantynivka to its northeast, which Russian forces are also trying to encircle, would give Moscow its most significant territorial gain inside Ukraine since the capture of the ruined city of Avdiyoka in early 2024.
It also gives Moscow a platform to push north into the two remaining major Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.
But the advance to those cities “is going to be really expensive and at least at the current pace, it’s going to take months and months,” Mr Kasteh Helmi said.
He added: “In a regional war, there may be incidents where gradual events become sudden and then something changes quickly. But I don’t see that happening in the near future.”
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the US-based Institute for Foreign Policy Research, said the capture of Pokrovsk would be an important victory for Russia for operational reasons, but Russia has a long way to go when it comes to controlling the rest of Donetsk.
Why did it take so long?
Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year, using a pincer maneuver to gradually encircle the city and threaten Ukrainian supply lines, sending small units and drones to disrupt Ukrainian supplies before sending larger reinforcements to its rear.
Ukraine says that Russia’s attack on the country’s forces has caused a lot of damage. Moscow says Ukraine is at risk of manpower shortages and its slower tactics are designed to minimize casualties.
An incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk region last year, which was countered by Moscow, also slowed Russia’s attack on Pokrovsk.
What is happening now and what will happen next?
Ukraine has rushed to strengthen its position in the city, but President Zelensky has admitted that “logistics are difficult”.
DeepState, a Ukrainian project mapping the front line based on verified open-source imagery, shows Russian forces pushing into the city. The project says the situation “continues to deteriorate until it may be too late to fix it”.
Russian Army Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov told Putin on Sunday that Russia has blocked off large numbers of Ukrainian troops in the area, but Kiev and Western military analysts deny that the country’s forces are still completely encircled.
Mr Kasthelmy says Ukraine has several options – but warns that thousands of troops in the nearby town of Mirnohrad are close to a complete siege and face “death or capture” as the Russians “clear the town”.
In one scenario, Ukraine could devote more resources to the defense of Pokrovsk and the northern parts of Russia’s Enbar to open supply routes to Mirnohord. Even if Pokrovsk is lost, Kiev may still have routes to supply Mirnohord if successful counterattacks are made.
A more likely scenario, he says, is for the Russians to slowly move into the northern parts of Pokrovsk over the next few weeks, bringing Mirnohord close to encirclement.
Kief will face the difficult decision of whether to withdraw his units from Mirnohord, a decision he expects to leave to “the last possible moment.”
“This decision needs to be made very quickly,” he said, “because staying at Mirnoherd would not serve any reasonable purpose at this time.”
He added: “If Ukraine succeeds in withdrawing and rescuing troops, it can continue to defend relatively effectively and delay Russian troops as much as possible.”
“Losing Pokrovsk does not really mean that the Ukrainians will lose ground quickly.”
