Russia advances in eastern Ukraine to encircle the strategic city of Pokrovsk

A dozen Russian airstrikes have hit the gas station where 45-year-old Lilia works as the sole employee, on the road leading from the Dnipropetrovsk region to the contested and strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk (Donetsk). The impacts have transformed the service station into a scene straight out of a movie, with one of the pumps charred, shrapnel holes everywhere, and the metal overhang crumpled like an accordion. As if on its last legs, Lilia serves customers with a faint smile from behind a small wooden door that she only opens to collect payment. It’s surprising that businesses like this manage to stay open so late on a road used by few others than soldiers. “As soon as we run out of fuel, we’ll close,” Lilia explains. The station is 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) from Russian positions.

With an estimated deployment of some 11,000 troops — according to the Ukrainian army’s own calculations — the invading soldiers are putting local troops, who are barely managing to maintain control of Pokrovsk, under immense pressure. In addition to infiltrating the urban area in small groups, they are attempting to encircle the entire region. “The most critical situation is now along the Pokrovsk axis. As in previous weeks, this is where the fighting is most intense and where Russian forces are most concentrated,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated on Wednesday night.

Zelenskiy acknowledged on Monday that the ratio of Russian soldiers to Ukrainian troops is eight: the numerical inferiority of the defending army is clear. And the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported Thursday that this has been the fiercest front in recent hours, with up to 55 enemy attacks.

The head of the Ukrainian army, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, has traveled to the area. From there, he acknowledges that “the situation is complicated,” although he dismisses as “Russian propaganda” the alleged surrounding of his troops, as claimed by Moscow. In any case, he warns that urban clashes are taking place. Pokrovsk is a key logistical and communications hub for controlling Donetsk, the eastern region of Ukraine coveted by Moscow since 2014, and of which Kyiv currently controls only 30%.

The road from the gas station extends toward the red zone that demarcates Russian positions and has been tracing an almost complete circle around the city, according to the map on the Deep State website, which is regularly updated by Ukrainian military analysts. The encirclement is not entirely complete — despite what Russian President Vladimir Putin maintains, having even referred to the encirclement of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers — but it does reflect the advance of the invading army.

In fact, on Wednesday morning the Russian army even managed to place its flag at the western entrance to Pokrovsk, although it was soon shot down by a drone launched by Ukrainian soldiers who have been trying to defend the city since the summer of 2024, as shown in released video footage.

That afternoon, Putin offered a ceasefire of several hours in Pokrovsk and Kupiansk — a town in the Kharkiv region also under siege — so that reporters could verify the situation of the supposedly surrounded Ukrainian soldiers. Although Kyiv denies an immediate collapse, some local analysts believe that Pokrovsk is on its way to becoming another Bakhmut or Avdiivka, towns in this region that were devastated before falling.

“When Putin talks about those thousands of Ukrainians surrounded, if Ukraine really had a dozen battalions there, I think the Russians would have very little chance of success,” argues Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian military officer and director of the Razumkov Center for Analysis. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) agrees: the Russians have advanced in eastern Pokrovsk, “but it is unlikely that these advances will cause an immediate collapse” of the city.

The fact that they raised a flag does not give Russian soldiers “full control,” Melnyk maintains in a telephone conversation. “There is no control on the Ukrainian side and no total control on the Russian side,” according to his information. At this moment, “the main challenge [for both armies] is the logistical crisis.” “If logistics cannot be guaranteed for the soldiers, they cannot receive ammunition, weapons, food, or water.” Both sides are trying to deliver these supplies with drones by air and land, although sometimes, Melnyk adds, the soldiers have to walk for miles, travel by bicycle, or in civilian vehicles.

Events like those of the last few hours have heightened pessimism in Kyiv regarding the enemy advance, which, according to military sources cited by local media, has managed to infiltrate some 200 infantry troops into Pokrovsk in small groups; some of them even reaching the train station. These sources report fighting within the city. The railway lines that run through the town — which had 60,000 inhabitants before the invasion launched in 2022 and where little more than a thousand people now remain — separate the Ukrainian positions to the south from the Russian positions to the north.

“For the first time, I can say that there is a risk of losing Pokrovsk during the month of November,” Ukrainian military analyst Denys Popovych told a radio station, arguing that while the Russians have not consolidated their positions within the city, they are doing so in the surrounding areas.

For Ukraine, “losing any town or city is a great tragedy,” notes Melnyk. “It’s true, Pokrovsk used to be one of the logistical hubs in the east, but I don’t know if it can still be considered as such, because it’s practically devastated. I repeat, it’s a great loss for Ukraine, but what does the other side gain? That area is devastated,” adds the former soldier.

On the ground, local units are trying to paint a less grim picture. “Urban battles are taking place in Pokrovsk with enemy groups who, thanks to a numerical advantage in forces and equipment, have managed to infiltrate the city and position themselves in different areas while the defenders mount an active resistance,” the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps of the Ukrainian Airborne Assault Force explained on its social media accounts on Monday. It also reported the arrival of reinforcements, including assault troops, artillery, and drones.

The train station is the same one from which the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital train evacuated civilians wounded during the Battle of Bakhmut two years ago. Bakhmut has been under Russian control since 2023. The situation has changed dramatically since then. The recent discovery of the bodies of civilians killed near the train station has caused grave concern. The head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Vadym Filashkin, himself acknowledges that the few remaining residents in the town center — 1,256, he specifies — cannot be evacuated due to the ongoing conflict at this important communications hub, crucial for the Ukrainian army’s logistics.

Pokrovsk, along with neighboring Myrnohrad, has become the fiercest front in the Donetsk region, which also includes Kostyantynivka, another city practically under siege, on the outskirts of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, another critical area. Clashes erupt in the city streets, while Russian drones gain air superiority. In a new military strategy, the devices are placed along the routes used by local troops to detonate when they approach.

“Many drone operators have already died in the city,” warns a drone pilot in messages published by Ukrainska Pravda, adding that he doesn’t rule out the possibility that “the brigades defending Myrnohrad could also be surrounded.” “There are dead Ukrainian soldiers on our roads, but no one can recover them,” he emphasizes. This publication gathers testimonies from exhausted and unsupported brigades, compounded by the complicated evacuation of the wounded.

The siege of Pokrovsk began last summer, but it wasn’t until a year later that the outlook for Kyiv darkened. In August, the Russians launched a surprise attack, which local troops attempted to counter in September, forcing the Russians to retreat. But that offensive appears to have been insufficient.

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