Ukraine's 21-month Pokrovsk resistance crumbles, Russia poised to capture city

As the war in Ukraine continues to escalate, Russian forces are on the brink of seizing the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which many are calling a symbolic victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian forces have been resisting the Russian occupation of the city for the past 21 months at an increasingly heavy cost.

Clashes inside the city intensified in the past few days after Russian troops successfully infiltrated the city. While the strategic value of Pokrovsk has been diminished significantly, its fall would still be considered the biggest win for Moscow since 2023. Sources on the ground told CNN that the city’s fall “ is almost inevitable”, raising concerns over Ukraine’s plans in the war.

While Kyiv has denied Russian claims that the Ukrainian forces in Pokrovsk have already been surrounded, saying on Wednesday that active operations stopping the Russian advance were still ongoing. Ukrainian soldiers on the ground are giving a grim picture.

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“The situation is difficult, with all types of fighting going on, firefights in urban areas, and shelling with all types of weapons,” one battalion commander told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. “We are almost surrounded, but we are used to it,” he said.

Why Pokrovsk’s capture is a symbolic victory of Russia

International researchers have observed that there have been a very high number of Russian casualties around Pokrovsk, even though taking over the city won’t make much difference on the ground. The battle for Pokrovsk is no longer a fight for a strategically important logistics hub. Instead, it has now morphed into a symbolic battle.

“From (a) battlefield perspective, it doesn’t make sense,” George Barros, who leads the Russia and Geospatial Intelligence teams at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, told CNN.

For a very long time, Pokrovsk was seen as a key Ukrainian city because of its robust road and rail connections. It sits on a junction of several major roads, leading to Donetsk and Kostyantynivka in the east and Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia to the west.

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“It was operationally significant because it was a supply line that supported the Ukrainian logistics, which then fanned out and supported the other Ukrainian tactical positions in smaller villages and in the field around Pokrovsk,” Barros explained. However, things changed once Russia began encircling Pokrovsk over the summer.

Frequent drone and missile attacks on the key highways and railroads have disrupted the elaborate network. The attacks have also forced Ukraine to find alternative supply routes, shifting the hub function away from Pokrovsk – a major success for the Russians.

Apart from this, Pokrovsk also hosted Ukraine’s last operating coking coal mine. However, even that was forced to shut down early this year. “From this point forward, it doesn’t actually operationally do anything for the Russians, because they already achieved the main effect that they needed to a while ago,” Barros told CNN.

Why does Russia want it?

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia amassed some 170,000 troops in the region to bolster the Pokrovsk offensive. Hence, it is clear that while Pokrovsk has been mostly ruined, it has still become a symbol in the war which has been going on for over three years.

The reason behind it is the fact that Pokrovsk would be the largest city Russia has seized since Bakhmut in May 2023. Before the war, the city used to house around 60,000; the majority have left since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Ukrainian authorities, some 1,200 civilians remain in the city.

“Strategically, from the political and informational perspective, Pokrovsk is very important, because Vladimir Putin has gone out of his way numerous times to make public national and international statements about the seizure,” Barros said.

“He is conducting a strategic information campaign which seeks to present Russia’s military victory on the battlefield as inevitable,” he added. Hence, it will be interesting to see the wider impact of the fall of Pokrovsk.