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Ukraine has deployed special forces to the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk in an attempt to push back an intense Russian assault involving thousands of troops, Kyiv’s top commander has said.
The escalating battle in the strategically important city comes as an overnight wave of Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine killed six people, including two children, and cut power to tens of thousands, officials said on Sunday.
The children killed were age 11 and 14 and both were boys, said Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets. Russia did not immediately comment, but has denied targeting civilians.
Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, lies on a major supply route for the Ukrainian army and has been in Moscow’s sights for more than a year as Russia pushes to control the entirety of the eastern Donetsk region.
The capture of Pokrovsk would be the most important Russian territorial gain inside Ukraine since Moscow took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.
At least 200 Russian soldiers have penetrated the city’s defences, Kyiv said earlier this week. Others are closing in on its outskirts in a pincer-shaped movement, according to battlefield maps published by the Institute for the Study of War.
The city, home to about 60,000 people before the war, is now a largely deserted wasteland devastated by fighting.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that he had given the order for “consolidated groups of special operations forces” to operate in the city. “We are holding Pokrovsk,” Syrski said in a social media post.
Deepstate, a Ukrainian map of the frontline made by compiling data from open-source images, shows Russian troops in full control of a small southern part of the city, with much of the rest still contested. In a later report, Deepstate said Russian forces were still infiltrating southern parts of Pokrovsk, with a significant number of infantry troops remaining inside.
Syrski added that Pokrovsk was under pressure from an “enemy group thousands strong”, but denied reports that Moscow had encircled the logistics hub. “A comprehensive operation to destroy and dislodge enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing,” he said.
Pokrovsk and the neighbouring town of Myrnohrad were “not surrounded or blocked, and we are doing everything we can to maintain logistics”, he said, adding that enemy units continued “to attempt to infiltrate residential areas and cut off our supply routes”.
On Saturday, Russia’s defence ministry said its troops had killed all 11 members of the Ukrainian special forces team. A Ukrainian military official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, denied the troops, trained to carry out covert operations through unconventional means such as sabotage and diversion, had been killed and said the operation was continuing.
The Russian defence ministry’s Zvezda news outlet said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops were beginning to lay down arms inside Pokrovsk, releasing video of two men it said were Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered. It was not possible to verify the video or determine where or when it had been filmed.
Russia also said its troops had pushed back a Ukrainian unit’s attempt to break out of Hryshyne, north-west of Pokrovsk. Battles in that area could indicate Russian forces are close to cutting off Ukrainian supply lines to Pokrovsk, Reuters noted.
Kyiv is increasing the number of its assault troops in the area, the 7th Rapid Response Corps said on Facebook, adding that the situation remained “difficult and dynamic” but noted that the army had “managed to improve its tactical position in several quarters of the city”.
Meanwhile, regional officials in Ukraine said an overnight drone strike set an oil tanker and infrastructure ablaze at Russia’s Tuapse port, home to a major oil export terminal and a refinery belonging to state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.
Unverified images on social media appeared to show flames engulfing terminal structures and a tanker at the Black Sea port. Russian officials said on Sunday two foreign civilian vessels were damaged, that there were no casualties and that the fire had been extinguished.
The battle for Pokrovsk comes as data shows Russia fired more missiles at Ukraine in overnight attacks in October than any other month since at least the start of 2023.
Russia’s army fired 270 missiles in October, up 46% on the previous month, according to an Agence France-Presse analysis of daily data published by Ukraine’s air force. It was the highest one-month tally since Kyiv started routinely publishing statistics at the beginning of 2023.
The strikes, which have targeted Ukraine’s fragile energy grid for the fourth winter running, have cut power to hundreds of thousands of people. On Sunday, officials said the entire region of Donetsk was without power as were nearly 58,000 people in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Kyiv and its backers have described the attacks as a deliberate and cynical strategy to wear down Ukraine’s civilian population. Russia has denied the charge.
With Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press
