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Russia has intensified its offensive in eastern Ukraine as US-led peace efforts falter, with some of Moscow’s forces entering the stronghold of Pokrovsk.
Kyiv has denied Russian claims that its troops were completely surrounded in the eastern Ukrainian city, which served as a logistical hub until last year and, if captured, could be used as a staging ground for deeper Russian advances. But Ukraine’s general staff on Sunday acknowledged that some 200 Russian troops had entered Pokrovsk and that fierce fighting was under way at multiple flashpoints along the 1,000km-long frontline.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said reports of encirclement were “a complete lie” after Russia’s chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov on Sunday claimed some 5,500 Ukrainian troops near Pokrovsk were completely surrounded, without providing any evidence.
But Zelenskyy acknowledged a “difficult situation” in Pokrovsk. “There is fierce fighting everywhere, including on the approach to the city, there are sabotage groups within the city and logistics are difficult,” he said on Sunday.
A months-long offensive has seen Russian forces make slow gains across several parts of the frontline, recently reaching the outskirts of the cities of Lyman and Kostyantynivka. Along with Pokrovsk, both cities are located in a Donetsk region that President Vladimir Putin demanded be handed over to Russia as a condition for a ceasefire.
Kostyantyn Mashovets, a military analyst with the Kyiv-based Information Resistance group, wrote on Telegram on Monday that there was “no basis to claim that Ukrainian troops are currently surrounded” in Pokrovsk.
“But the threat is very real,” he added.
Fighting has grown more chaotic as both sides increasingly rely on drones loaded with explosives to hit supply vehicles up to 20km behind the contact line. Ukrainian war monitoring group DeepState said on Sunday that Ukrainian troops had seized back three villages north of Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian forces had lost those and other settlements after a surprise Russian offensive in early August. Ukrainian command was forced to dispatch reinforcements in the area to prevent a breakthrough that could have threatened the Ukrainian fortress belt of Slovyansk-Kramatorsk-Druzhkivka.
Russia’s main offensive effort has remained focused on the agglomeration of Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad, two mining towns with a prewar population of about 100,000 people. In the past year, Russian forces slowly advanced north and south of the two cities in an attempt to surround it or put crucial logistical routes in range of its drones.
But the situation markedly deteriorated around Pokrovsk in the past weeks as small groups of Russian units started seeping through thinly manned Ukrainian defences and entered the town.
Ukrainian serviceman Stanislav Bunyatov wrote on social media that the situation in Pokrovsk was particularly difficult because Russian infantry was “constantly flanking our positions”, with Ukrainian forces coming under heavy artillery shelling and drone attacks, which were also complicating evacuation efforts.
Manpower shortages in Ukrainian frontline brigades have made it easier for Russian forces to identify and exploit defensive gaps. War monitoring groups have confirmed the presence of Russian units south of the train tracks dividing Pokrovsk in half.
“Enemy infantry groups of 3 to 5 men, and less frequently 8 to 10, are observed moving throughout virtually the entire southern part of the city,” according to Mashovets. “The enemy is actively creating chaos within the defence inside the city, using sabotage methods rather than a systematic assault in the classical sense, building by building.”
Further north, Russian troops have advanced into the centre of Kupiansk, a former railway hub in the Kharkiv region captured by Russian troops in the early phase of its 2022 invasion, but seized back in a Ukrainian counteroffensive later that year.
Russian forces have also been pushing west in the much less dense, agrarian region of Dnipropetrovsk — which would be additional territorial gains for Russia in areas it has not previously occupied. Ukraine’s general staff reported a sharp rise in mechanised assaults in the past week, in a shift from the small-unit attacks seeking to bypass Ukrainian positions it had previously observed.
But Russia’s advances also come at a high cost, with British spy chief Richard Moore estimating last month that Moscow’s forces may have suffered up to 1mn casualties, including about 250,000 killed since the start of the invasion.
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