Russia has ratcheted up its offensive on the long-targeted eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, launching a fresh push on the settlement Moscow has coveted as American efforts to force the Kremlin to negotiate a peace deal flounder.
Roughly 200 Russian soldiers have infiltrated the city in small groups, according to an update published by the Ukrainian military over the weekend. Ukrainian troops are clashing with Russian fighters inside Pokrovsk, drone units working hard against Russian attempts to “gain a foothold in the urban area” of the town, Kyiv’s armed forces said.
Ukraine’s military nodded to the “difficult” situation in Pokrovsk on Sunday, and said Russia was “stepping up its offensive efforts” with more soldiers than Ukraine could deploy in and around the town. Ukraine has acknowledged “fierce battles” in Pokrovsk itself and the surrounding areas, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told journalists on Monday that Russian soldiers outnumber Ukraine’s troops eight to one in Pokrovsk.
Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s most senior general, told Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend that Moscow had surrounded roughly 5,500 Ukrainian soldiers in Pokrovsk, a claim Zelensky denied. Several of Russia’s influential military bloggers disputed Gerasimov’s claim, and the U.S.-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which tracks daily changes to the front lines, said it had not observed evidence to support the Russian general’s report.
But “special attention is focused on Pokrovsk,” where Russia has positioned its “main strike force,” Zelensky said this week.
Why Does Pokrovsk Matter?
Pokrovsk was dubbed a “fortress” settlement, key to Ukrainian lines in the east and connected to other cities forming the backbone of Ukraine’s defense in the east. Russia kicked off a push to take Pokrovsk in the summer of 2024.
Russia, rather than attempting to laboriously power through the urban area of Pokrovsk, moved to encircle the city and cut off Ukrainian access to the settlement. Urban areas typically make for slower advances, and Moscow opted to skirt around the south of the town to advance toward the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region.
Pokrovsk was a key logistics hub for Ukraine in Donetsk, but is no longer really functioning anymore for Ukrainian troops, Daniel Rice, a former aide to Ukraine’s military and currently the president of American University Kyiv, told Newsweek.
With Pokrovsk under its control, Russia could more easily launch operations westward. The E-50 highway stretches west from Pokrovsk, connecting to Pavlograd in Dnipropetrovsk. The highway then links to Dnipro, one of central Ukraine’s major cities.
Capturing Pokrovsk “opens the way to Pavlograd and makes it possible to besiege two fortresses: Sloviansk and Kramatorsk,” Oleg Dunda, a Ukrainian lawmaker with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, told Newsweek.
After well over a year of drawn-out fighting in and around Pokrovsk, it would be a significant blow to Ukrainian morale if the town fell.
Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine, in 2014. In September 2022, following its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Russia claimed to have annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of mainland Ukraine, plus the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. This claim is not internationally recognized, and Moscow does not fully control these regions.
Russia also controls limited chunks of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
‘Final Phase’
Ukrainian military blogger Konstantin Mashovets said on Monday the “greatest danger” for Ukrainian troops was the threat posed by Russian assault groups advancing toward Pokrovsk’s western outskirts.
“There is still no basis for claiming that Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad are encircled,” Mashovets said. Myrnohrad sits immediately east of Pokrovsk. “However, the threat, and a very real one at that, does indeed exist.”
The battle for Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad is in its “decisive” and “final phase,” the Ukrainian blogger said.
The town is Russia’s “main objective,” Zelensky said on Monday.
The Trump administration had long appeared reluctant to force Moscow to the negotiating table, but last week slapped sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, shortly before the European Union adopted its 19th sanctions package against Moscow, targeting its energy profits and financial institutions.
Russia has said its position on a peace deal for Ukraine hasn’t changed, while Trump shelved plans for an in-person summit with Putin, saying it could be a “wasted journey.”
