Russian forces appear to finally be on the verge of taking control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a symbolic victory that President Vladimir Putin has been pursuing for 21 months at increasingly high costs.
Fighting in the city has intensified in recent days after Russian forces successfully invaded the city. Local officials say the fall of Pokrovsk, whose strategic value has already been significantly reduced, would still be Moscow’s biggest victory since 2023, but now seems all but inevitable.
Kiev denied Russian claims that Ukrainian forces in Pokrovsk were already surrounded and said on Wednesday that active operations to halt the Russian advance were still underway, but Ukrainian soldiers on the ground spoke of an increasingly grim reality.
“The situation is difficult, with all kinds of fighting going on, gun battles in the city, shelling with all kinds of weapons,” one battalion commander told CNN on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“We’re pretty much under siege, but we’re used to it,” he said. Another soldier, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told CNN that Russian forces continued to advance in large numbers.
“The intensity of their movements is so intense that the (Ukrainian) drone pilots cannot keep up with their pace. The Russians often operate in groups of three and rely on the fact that two of the aircraft will be destroyed, but one will still reach the city and establish a foothold there. Such a group can pass about 100 aircraft a day,” a soldier from the Ukrainian Peaky Blinders drone unit told CNN.
While the claim that Russia is willing to sacrifice two soldiers to break through one may seem perplexing, it is consistent with the observations of international researchers who have noted that Russian casualties in the vicinity of Pokrovsk are extremely high, even though capturing the city does not change much on the ground.
The battle for Pokrovsk is no longer a battle for a strategically important logistics hub. Instead, it turned into a now iconic battle.
“From a battlefield perspective, that doesn’t make sense,” said George Barros, who heads the Russia and geospatial intelligence team at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.
Pokrovsk has long been considered an important city for Ukrainians due to its road and rail connections. It is located at the intersection of several major roads, leading to Donetsk and Kostiantynivka in the east and Dnipro and Zaporizhia in the west.
“It was operationally important because it was a supply line that supported Ukrainian logistics and then other Ukrainian tactical positions spread out in small villages and fields around Pokrovsk,” he said.
However, the situation changed after Russia began laying siege to Pokrovsk during the summer.
Frequent drone and artillery attacks on major highways and railway lines forced Kiev to find alternative supply routes and move its hub functions away from Pokrovsk, a major success for Russia. The city was also home to Ukraine’s last operating coking coal mine, which was forced to close earlier this year.
“From this point forward, it’s actually of no use to Russia operationally, because Russia had already achieved the main effect it needed a while ago,” Barros told CNN.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier this week that Russia had amassed about 170,000 troops in the region to step up its offensive on Pokrovsk.
Even though Pokrovsk is largely in ruins and its strategic value has largely been lost, it is clear that Pokrovsk has become a symbol. And in a largely stagnant war, symbols like this are important.
Pokrovsk will be the largest city occupied by Russia since Bakhmut in May 2023. Approximately 60,000 people lived in Pokrovsk before the war, but most have left since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Ukrainian authorities, about 1,200 civilians remain in the city.
Some of those left behind may have missed the chance to flee – Ukrainian authorities say evacuation is not possible at this time – while others may be waiting for Russian troops to arrive. The Russian Ministry of Defense has already released a video showing the evacuation of Pokrovsk residents to the Russian side.
“From a strategic, political and intelligence point of view, Pokrovsk is very important, because President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly gone out of his way to make public statements domestically and internationally about this seizure,” Baros said.
“He is running a strategic intelligence campaign that seeks to show that Russia’s military victory on the battlefield is inevitable,” it added.
President Putin has made it clear that his goal is to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions in the south.
Capturing Pokrovsk would allow Russia to shift its focus elsewhere, to a series of industrial cities in the northeast that form the backbone of Ukraine’s defenses in the region.
A soldier from Ukraine’s 129th Brigade, currently stationed near Kostyantynivka, told CNN that the local expectation is that “as soon as Russia takes care of Pokrovsk and[neighboring town]Mirnohrad, the pressure on Kostyantynivka will increase and they will move to Drushkivka.”
He said his battalion does not have the necessary number of soldiers and lacks armored vehicles.
The soldier said that the main concern of the military in the region is that the Ukrainian leadership will try to hold on to what remains of the city of Pokrovsk for as long as possible, since abandoning it would be considered a major failure.
“Even though everyone already understood that the fall of Pokrovsk was inevitable, no order was given to withdraw. Pokrovsk was held for a very long time, a very long time. But the army was exhausted and reinforcements could not be sent in time.”
He said the longer Ukrainian forces hesitate, repeating the painful experience of previous Kiev forces, the more dangerous the withdrawal will become. The Battles of Bakhmut in 2023 and Avdiivka in 2024 were both characterized by delayed withdrawals, which led to high casualty rates for Ukrainian soldiers.
“We have to break through the bottleneck, but you all understand that breaking out of such a siege comes at great cost,” he said.
