Explainer: Why is Russia pushing so hard to take the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk?

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Members of the White Angel unit of Ukrainian police officers who evacuate people from the frontline towns and villages, check an area for residents, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the frontline town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 21, 2025. — Reuters pic

MOSCOW, Nov 5 — Russian forces are advancing inside the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, destroying trapped Ukrainian military formations and repelling Ukrainian efforts to break out of encirclement, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Monday.

Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, who has estimated that Russia has over 100,000 troops fighting in the area, says his forces are pushing hard to try to dislodge Russian forces and are broadly holding their ground.

Following are key facts about Pokrovsk, which Russians call by its Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk, and the long battle for its control which began in earnest in mid-2024.

What is Pokrovsk?

Pokrovsk is a road and rail hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated and few civilians remain amid its pulverised apartment buildings and cratered roads.

Ukraine’s only mine producing coking coal — used in its once vast steel industry — is around six miles (10km) west of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest said in January it had suspended mining operations there.

The city lies on a key road which has been used by the Ukrainian military to supply other embattled outposts.

A technical university in Pokrovsk, the region’s largest and oldest, now stands abandoned, damaged by shelling.

A still image taken from a video released October 31 and shared with Reuters by a Ukrainian military source was said to show a helicopter and troops deployed in the eastern city of Pokrovsk, Ukraine. — Ukrainian Military source pic via Reuters

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 per cent of Donbas — an area of about 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) in mostly northern Donetsk.

Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, 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 give Moscow its most important single territorial gain inside Ukraine since it took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.

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 US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, say that capturing Pokrovsk would hand Russia an important win, especially if it can do it by the end of the year.

But though important for operational reasons, Lee says taking Pokrovsk would still leave Russia a lot of work to do when it came to taking control of the rest of Donetsk and the two important fortress cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

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 is 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 to their rear 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 too.

A view shows apartment buildings hit by Russian military strikes in the front line town of Pokrovsk, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 21, 2025. — Reuters pic

What is happening now? 

Ukraine has rushed to strengthen positions in the city.

“There is fierce fighting in the city and on the approaches to the city... Logistics are difficult. But we must continue to destroy the occupiers,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday. Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff, told Putin on Sunday that Russia had blocked a large number of Ukrainian soldiers in the area.

DeepState, a Ukrainian project that maps the front line based on verified open source images, shows Russian forces pushing into the city, though much of it is still in grey, beyond firm control of either side. The Ukrainian military said late on Monday that Russia did not fully control any district in Pokrovsk and that its own forces had made gains near the town of Dobropillia in the same region to try to force Moscow to divert its focus away from Pokrovsk. — Reuters