Strategic Battle for Pokrovsk: Russia's Critical Push to Control Eastern Ukraine's Gateway City

Russian forces are on the verge of capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, having executed a strategic pincer movement that has nearly encircled it completely. According to Russian military bloggers, small mobile Russian units have already penetrated the city.

Pokrovsk serves as a crucial road and rail hub in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Before the war, it housed approximately 60,000 residents, but now most have evacuated, with all children relocated and few civilians remaining. The city sits on an essential road utilized by Ukrainian military operations.

Located just six miles west of Pokrovsk is Ukraine's only coking coal mine, vital to the country's once-thriving steel industry. Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest announced in January that mining operations there had been suspended. The region's largest and oldest technical university in Pokrovsk now stands abandoned after sustaining damage from shelling.

Russia aims to control the entire Donbas region, comprising Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still maintains control over roughly 10 percent of Donbas – approximately 5,000 square kilometers in western Donetsk. Russian President Vladimir Putin claims Donbas is legally Russian territory, though Kyiv and Western nations reject this assertion as an illegal territorial annexation.

Seizing Pokrovsk, dubbed "the gateway to Donetsk" in Russian media, along with Kostiantynivka to its northeast, would provide Moscow a strategic platform to advance northward toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – the two largest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk. Controlling Pokrovsk would further disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front and strengthen Russia's ongoing campaign to capture Chasiv Yar, which occupies higher ground offering potential control over a wider area.

The capture would also expand Russia's options for attacking Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region to the west, an area not officially claimed by Moscow, though Russia reports establishing a small foothold there.

Russia has threatened Pokrovsk for over a year but has employed different tactics compared to the frontal assaults used in places like Bakhmut. Instead, Russian forces implemented a pincer movement to nearly completely surround Pokrovsk and threaten Ukrainian supply lines, while deploying small units and drones to disrupt logistics and create chaos behind Ukrainian positions.

This strategy effectively created what Russian military bloggers describe as a "grey zone" of ambiguity within the city, where neither side maintained full control, but which proved extremely difficult and costly for Ukraine to defend.

Fully clearing both Pokrovsk and nearby Myrnohrad may require additional time, potentially delaying Russia's formal announcement of capture. Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region last year also slowed the Russian offensive on Pokrovsk.

Ukraine has hurriedly reinforced its positions in the city. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged on Sunday that "fierce fighting" was occurring in and around the city, with logistics becoming increasingly difficult, but emphasized the need to continue "destroying the occupiers."

Russia's Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, informed Putin on Sunday that Russian forces had blocked a significant number of Ukrainian soldiers in the area. Russian bloggers claim Ukraine has withdrawn its elite units from the region.

The pro-Ukrainian DeepState war blogger reported that Russian forces continued infiltrating the city, describing the situation in Pokrovsk as "on the verge of critical" and deteriorating to a point where "it may be too late to fix."

Russia's military currently claims control over more than 19 percent of Ukraine, approximately 116,000 square kilometers. Gerasimov also reported to Putin that Russian forces are threatening Kupiansk in Ukraine's Kharkiv region and advancing in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Russian advances toward Zaporizhzhia city suggest Moscow's current plans include capturing the entire region. Russia classifies Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson as subjects of the Russian Federation, while Kyiv maintains they are all Ukrainian territory.

Most countries do not recognize these areas as Russian territory, though Syria, North Korea, and Nicaragua have recognized Moscow's annexation of Crimea. The United Nations General Assembly declared the Crimean annexation illegal in 2014, recognizing it as part of Ukraine.

Putin has accused Western nations of double standards for recognizing Kosovo's 2008 independence against Serbia's wishes while opposing Crimea's recognition. Russia opposed Kosovo's independence.