By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian forces are close to taking the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after a pincer movement almost totally encircled it while small groups of highly mobile Russian units penetrated the city, according to Russian military bloggers.
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.
It lies on a key road which has been used by the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine’s only mine producing coking coal – used in its once vast steel industry – is around six miles (10 km) west of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest said in January it had suspended mining operations there.
A technical university in Pokrovsk, the region’s largest and oldest, was damaged by shelling and now stands abandoned.
WHY DOES RUSSIA WANT POKROVSK?
Russia wants to take the whole of the Donbas region, which comprises Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still controls about 10% of Donbas – an area of about 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) in western Donetsk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Donbas is now legally part of Russia but Kyiv and the West reject Moscow’s seizure of the territory as an illegal land grab.
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.
Control of Pokrovsk would allow Moscow to further disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front and boost its long-running campaign to capture Chasiv Yar, which sits on higher ground offering potential control of a wider area.
Its capture would also give Russia more options to attack Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region to the west, which is not one of the areas claimed by Moscow, though it says it has established a small foothold there.
WHY HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG?
Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year but instead of the deadly frontal assaults it used most famously in Bakhmut, Russia’s military has deployed a different tactic.
Russian forces used a pincer movement to almost fully encircle Pokrovsk and threaten Ukrainian supply lines, then harried Ukrainian forces by sending in small units and drones to disrupt logistics and sow chaos to their rear.
Essentially, Russia’s tactics carved what Russian military bloggers called a grey zone of ambiguity out of the city where neither side had control but which was extremely difficult – and costly – to defend.
To clear both Pokrovsk and nearby Myrnohrad may take some time and so delay Russia’s formal announcement. Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia last year also slowed the Russian attack on Pokrovsk.
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. Russian bloggers said Ukraine had withdrawn its top units from the area.
The pro-Ukrainian DeepState war blogger said Russian forces were continuing to infiltrate the city.
“The situation in Pokrovsk is on the verge of critical and continues to deteriorate to the point that it may be too late to fix,” DeepState said.
Reuters was unable to verify battlefield reports from either side due to reporting restrictions in the war zone.
WHAT IS RUSSIA DOING ALONG THE REST OF THE FRONT?
Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19% of Ukraine, or some 116,000 square km (44,800 square miles).
Gerasimov told Putin on Sunday that Russian forces were also threatening Kupiansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and were advancing in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Russian advances towards the city of Zaporizhzhia indicate that Moscow’s current plans include taking the whole of that region.
Moscow classes the regions of Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as subjects of the Russian Federation. Kyiv says they are all part of Ukraine.
Most countries do not recognise the areas as part of Russia but Syria, North Korea and Nicaragua have recognised Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. The United Nations General Assembly declared in 2014 the annexation illegal and recognised Crimea as part of Ukraine.
Putin has accused the West of having double standards for recognising Kosovo as an independent country in 2008 against Serbia’s wishes but opposing the recognition of Crimea. Russia opposed the independence of Kosovo.
(Reporting by Guy FaulconbridgeEditing by Gareth Jones)
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