By Dan Peleschuk
KYIV, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Russian forces are trying to advance around the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, Kiev’s military said on Monday, hoping to conclude a months-long campaign to seize the strategic center as Moscow seeks to capture the entire Donetsk region.
Ukraine has struggled to halt slow Russian advances around Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the 1,200 km (746 mile) frontline as it comes under pressure from the United States to reach a peace deal to end the four-year war in ongoing talks.
Kiev’s General Staff said on Monday that its forces were still holding the northern part of Pokrovsk, a pre-war town of 60,000 people, and were also defending the nearby smaller town of Myrnohrad.
Pokrovsk, a railway link, has been the site of fierce fighting since last year. Its fall marks Russia’s biggest battlefield victory since seizing the eastern town of Avdiivka in early 2024.
Moscow claimed late last year that it captured Pokrovsk, which Kyiv denied.
Analysts say Russia has captured only about 1.3% of Ukrainian territory as of early 2023, although its aerial bombardment has caused extensive damage to the national power grid in recent months.
Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps, which oversees defenses in the area, said Russia was “pressing in the Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad area” by exploiting “insufficient” Ukrainian air defenses, using guided bombs and controlling the heights and flanks with their larger manpower.
Ukrainian open-source researchers DeepState said Russian infantry was moving into the northern part of Pokrovsk and trying to push further into the nearby village of Hryshyne.
The group, whose map showed that almost all of Pokrovsk and much of Myrnohrad are under Russian control, described the current fighting as the “last battles” for the two cities.
‘A MATTER OF YEARS’
Nearly four years after its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, Russia occupies nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including the Crimean Peninsula and parts of eastern Ukraine occupied before the war.
Russia is demanding that Ukraine relinquish the remaining 20% of the unconquered industrialized region of Donetsk, something Kiev refuses to do.
Moscow has vowed to continue fighting until it achieves its war aims and says the territory issue is of “fundamental importance” to ongoing peace talks brokered by the United States.
Polls show that a majority of Ukrainians say it would be unacceptable for the rest of Donetsk, which includes the heavily defended so-called “fortress cities” of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, to be ceded in exchange for peace.
“[E]even under these conditions, capturing the entire Donetsk region remains a matter of years for Russia,” the 7th Rapid Response Corps said on X.
“The fighting for the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration could last up to three years and come at the cost of heavy losses for the invading forces.”
(Additional reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Writing by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Gareth Jones)