Ukrainian military authorities insist their forces are holding out in the frontline eastern city of Pokrovsk amid fierce fighting against an assembled force of some 170,000 Russian troops.
“We are holding Pokrovsk,” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, wrote on Facebook on November 1.
“A comprehensive operation to destroy and dislodge enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing,” he added a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the fight for the mostly destroyed city “our priority.”
“The Russians want to turn our entire country into what they are doing to Pokrovsk, what they are doing to Kupyansk, and other towns and communities,” Zelenskyy said on October 31. “They must be halted where they have reached – and destroyed there.”
Zelenskyy said Russian forces had assembled some 170,000 troops in the Pokrovsk area and that they were suffering heavy losses. He did not speak on Ukrainian troop levels or losses.
Following Western media reports, Kyiv confirmed that special forces had been deployed to the strategic city — which had a prewar population of some 70,000 — as Russian forces claimed to have encircled Ukrainian defenders there.
Russia Troops Infiltrate City
Estimates suggest that between 200 and 400 Russian soldiers are now embedded within the Donetsk region city’s eastern districts, using urban terrain, basements, and civilian disguises to evade Ukrainian detection.
Like the region’s major cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, which remain under Ukrainian control, Pokrovsk holds significant military value, providing Ukrainian forces with vital supply routes.
Analysts warn that the city’s fall could open a route west into Dnipropetrovsk for Russian forces, putting Ukraine’s southern regions at risk.
The latest analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think-tank and research group, said that “Ukrainian forces marginally advanced during recent counterattacks north of Pokrovsk as Russian forces continue to infiltrate [into the city].”
Officially, the Ukrainian military said the situation in Pokrovsk “remains difficult and dynamic” but insisted the army had “managed to improve its tactical position in several quarters of the city.”
Still, the situation on the ground remains unclear and cannot be independently verified.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s Zvezda news service on November 1 claimed that Ukrainian troops were beginning to surrender in Pokrovsk.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also claimed that its forces had killed all 11 members of a Ukrainian special forces team that had landed in the city from a helicopter.
Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian military official as denying that the special forces had been killed and said the operation was ongoing.
As the life-or-death struggle raged around Pokrovsk, other areas of Ukraine were not spared.
At least seven people were killed and dozens of others, including children, wounded across Ukrainian regions on November 1, officials reported.
Vladislav Haivanenko, the Dnipropetrovsk region acting governor, wrote on Telegram that a Russian strike hit a shop near the southwestern city of Dnipro, killing two people and injuring several others.
Ukrainian authorities said another person was killed in an attack on the town of Marhanets, also in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russian Missile Attacks Intensify
Data compiled by Ukrainian forces and analyzed by AFP showed that Russian forces in October launched more missiles at Ukraine in overnight attacks than in any month since the beginning of 2023.
Much of the attacks have targeted Ukraine energy infrastructure, leading to power cuts to hundreds of thousands of people as winter approaches.
Kyiv has claimed that it is a deliberate effort by the Kremlin to wear down the civilian population as the war heads closer to the four-year mark. Moscow denies that it targets civilian areas despite widespread evidence of such attacks.
The analysis shows that Russia’s military fired 270 missiles over October, up 46 percent on the previous month. That does not include drone attacks.
