While negotiations regarding the US’ plan to end the war in Ukraine are underway, Russia has announced the capture of the cities of Pokrovsk and Vovchansk in the region of Donetsk. The Ukrainian government denies this and accuses Russia of propaganda.
Who is in control of Pokrovsk?
On December 1, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, citing a report by Russia’s General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov to Russian President Vladimir Putin, declared that “Krasnoarmeysk,” the old Soviet name of the city which is still used by Russia, had been captured. Ukraine renamed the “City of the Red Army” to Pokrovsk in 2016.
But on December 2, the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that it had not found evidence for the “complete Russian seizure of Pokrovsk.” On the same day, a senior NATO official told journalists in Brussels that over 95% of the city was under Russian control. They said that there were “still some small pockets in the city where there are some Ukrainian forces that are continuing to provide some resistance.” They added that Ukraine had “been able to take measures so that the fall of Pokrovsk will not have the same strategic impact that it would have had, had this occurred on the Russian timeline.”
The Ukrainian military insists that it has the situation under control. On December 1, it said that despite the difficult situation, the army was repelling enemy attacks in the Pokrovsk metropolitan area.
“Our soldiers are preparing for their tasks this winter. We are strengthening our positions and equipping them appropriately. Last month, the enemy’s plan to occupy the Pokrovsk metropolitan area failed again,” a statement by the Airborne Assault Forces read. General Staff spokesman Dmytro Lykhoviy told the Ukrinform news agency that as of December 3, the northern part of the city along the railway line remained under Kyiv’s control.
Staged show for Steve Witkoff?
To prove the alleged occupation of Pokrovsk, Moscow released a video showing soldiers holding up the Russian flag in the city center. But military expert Jan Matveyev said this was not proof of the city’s capture now as Russia had occupied the city in the past. He said this was a staged show for the United States Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to the Russian capital Moscow.
According to Roman Pohorily and Ruslan Mykula from the Ukrainian analytical project DeepState, fighting has shifted to the northern part of the city in recent weeks: “Previously, the Russians advanced in groups of two or three before being disabled on the northern outskirts of the city, but now they are advancing in groups of four or five. This shows that there are now so many Russians in the city center that they can advance from there in closed groups,” Mykula said.
Due to a lack of infantry, he continued, they had not yet succeeded in completely driving Ukrainian forces out of the city but this was “only a matter of time” because there were more Russians than Ukrainians.
Pohorily added that the Ukrainian tactic of repeatedly “disabling” individual Russian troops was not sustainable. Although Ukrainian units were able to recapture individual roads or areas, Russian forces would return after a while because the access routes from the south remained open. “They have a large concentration of troops there. Therefore, this will not fundamentally resolve the situation,” he predicted.
Austrian military expert Markus Reisner also confirmed to DW that Ukrainian forces were still in control of isolated houses on the outskirts of the city and were resisting Russian attempts to break their resistance with glide bombs. “But from the military’s point of view, the city has already fallen,” he said.
What about Myrnohrad?
According to the DeepState experts, the outcome in Pokrovsk will also determine the fate of Myrnohrad, which is about 7 kilometers (4.34 miles) away. Despite a significantly lower Russian presence in the city, they said that the situation there was even more dangerous: “Logistics are still functional in Pokrovsk,” said Mykula. “But it is almost impossible to enter or leave Myrnohrad, even though the city is not physically surrounded.”
Ukrainian troops there were supplied with drones and ground robots, explained Pohorily, adding that it was already extremely dangerous to reach or leave the city on foot. “If Pokrovsk falls, the Russians will control every movement,” he warned. “I don’t know how the Ukrainian forces will be able to get out of Myrnohrad in such a situation.”
He and Mykola said that street battles were the exception in Myrnohrad. Instead, Russian troops were advancing on the city outskirts from the north, south, and east and repeatedly attacking the center with bombs and rockets to drive out the Ukrainian forces.
“In the southeast, for example, there is a point from which they launch drones. This suggests that they are quite successful in the southern part of Myrnohrad,” said Pohorily. He added that Russians had managed to infiltrate repeatedly the villages Rivne and Svitle, located between Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.
Could Russia take the whole Donetsk region?
Pohorily said that “only a miracle” could still save the situation for Ukraine and under such circumstances “the main priority is to save human lives.” However, he did not venture to predict what consequences the loss of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad would have for the rest of the Donetsk region.
For Mykula, the capture of the cities was likely to make it easier for the Russians to attack the parts of the region that are still free. “All their [Russia’s] logistics will be concentrated on these cities, which will be turned into bases,” he said, adding that thousands of soldiers could then be stationed there.
The senior NATO official quoted above also predicted that if Pokrovsk were captured, the Russians would use the city “for logistics and as a springboard to attack other cities in Donetsk.” But they added that the “fall of Pokrovsk would not pretend an imminent collapse of Ukrainian defenses, which we still view as unlikely in the near term.” They said it was not a “realistic possibility” that the Russians would take the remainder of the Donetsk region for “at least another year or two.”
Experts at the Institute for the Study of War also doubt that the fall of Pokrovsk would significantly accelerate Russia’s conquest of the rest of the Donetsk region.
This article was originally published in Ukrainian.
