Russia is desperate to take Ukraine's Pokrovsk. But why is the city so important?

What is Pokrovsk?

Pokrovsk is a road and rail junction in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. It was previously an important logistics hub for the Ukrainian army, being situated on a key road which the troops used to supply other embattled outposts along the frontline.

However, most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated, and few civilians remain amid Pokrovsk’s pulverised apartment buildings and cratered roads.

Ukraine’s only mine producing coking coal - used in its once vast steel industry - is around six miles (10 km) west of Pokrovsk. Mining operations there have been suspended.

Pokrovsk is also home to the region’s largest technical university, which now stands abandoned, damaged by shelling.

Why does Russia want Pokrovsk?

Russia wants to take the whole of the Donbas region, which comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still controls about 10% of Donbas - an area of about 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) in mostly northern Donetsk.

Capturing Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka to its northeast, which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

It would also leave Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region to the west, where Russian forces say they have already established a foothold, more vulnerable to Russian advances.

Pokrovsk would be Moscow’s most important single territorial gain inside Ukraine since it took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.

Moscow wants to convince the West that its capture of the remainder of the Donetsk region is inevitable and that it would be better for Kyiv to voluntarily hand it over as part of a peace deal.

Ukraine, which has so far rejected that idea, is anxious to show its Western partners that it can make the Russians pay a heavy price for relatively modest territorial gains and is therefore deserving of continued military and financial aid.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Donbas is now legally part of Russia. Kyiv and most Western nations reject Moscow’s seizure of the territory as an illegal land grab.

Some Western military analysts, like Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, say that capturing Pokrovsk would be an important win for Russia for operational reasons.

But Russia would still remain well short of its goal of controlling the rest of Donetsk, including the two fortress cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, Lee said.

Why has it taken so long?

Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year. Instead of the full-frontal assaults it used in earlier battles like the bloody campaign for the similar-sized city of Bakhmut, Russia’s military has been using a pincer movement to gradually encircle Pokrovsk and threaten Ukrainian supply lines.

Russian forces harry Ukrainian troops by sending in small units and drones to disrupt logistics and sow chaos before sending in larger reinforcements.

Ukraine says Russia’s offensive has seen its forces sustain huge losses. Moscow says it is Ukraine, with its significantly smaller population, that is at risk of running out of men and that its own slower tactics are designed to minimise casualties.

An incursion into Russia’s Kursk region by Ukrainian forces last year, which Moscow fought back, slowed the Russian attack on Pokrovsk.

What’s happening now?

In a statement on Friday, Kyiv’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said it was inflicting heavy losses on Russian troops and bolstering its own forces, including with drone units.

“The enemy is trying to cross the railway to increase the area of ​​occupation of the city, but our troops are blocking these attempts,” it said.

“The enemy’s troops in Pokrovsk are being ground down. As a result, the enemy is having to replenish its losses among personnel."

Ukrainian open-source mapping group Deep State showed on Friday that Russian troops have pushed across the rail line running through Pokrovsk in two parts of the city, the first on November 14, and the second on November 20.

Gerasimov told Putin that Russian forces had taken a string of settlements adjacent to Pokrovsk and were destroying Ukrainian soldiers in the area.

Reuters was unable to verify battlefield reports from either side due to reporting restrictions in the war zone.

Russia’s defence ministry released a video on Thursday said to show its soldiers moving freely through the southern part of Pokrovsk, patrolling deserted streets lined with charred apartment blocks.

Reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow and by Dan Peleschuk in Kyiv; Additional reporting by Felix Hoske in Kyiv; Editing by Gareth Jones, Peter Graff and Hugh Lawson