MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Wednesday that Ukrainian troops in the battered cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk were encircled and should surrender, as they had no chance of survival otherwise.
Russia has been trying to capture Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, since 2024 as part of an attempt to take the entirety of the Donbas region, of which Ukrainian forces still control about 10%, or 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles).
In a break with the frontal assaults which Russian forces used against other cities, Russia has used pincer movements to almost encircle Ukrainian forces in both Pokrovsk and Kupiansk while small highly-mobile units and drones disrupted logistics and sowed chaos behind Ukrainian lines.
Russia’s tactics in both locations created what Russian military bloggers called a grey zone of ambiguity where neither side had full control, but which was extremely difficult for Ukraine to defend.
Battlefield maps show that Russian forces are a few kilometres away from fully encircling Pokrovsk, known by Russia as Krasnoarmeysk, and control a significant part of Kupiansk and are advancing on the main road to the city.
Russia’s defence ministry directly contradicted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s statement on Monday that Ukrainian forces were trying to clear what he had said were just 60 Russian soldiers in Kupiansk.
It said Ukrainian units were trapped in what it cast as “cauldrons” and that their position was deteriorating rapidly while Russian forces advanced, “leaving no chance for Ukrainian servicemen to save themselves other than by voluntary surrender.”
Nearly four years into the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two, Russia is trying to take the whole of Donbas and advancing in the Kharkiv and Dnipopetrovsk regions of eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19% of Ukraine, or some 116,000 square km (44,800 square miles). Pro-Ukrainian maps indicate that Russia has taken more than 3,400 square km of Ukrainian territory so far this year.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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