The battle for Pokrovsk

As of 13 November 2025, the battle for Pokrovsk has become the central drama of the eastern front: a grinding urban fight inside the city itself, combined with an encirclement battle in the surrounding region, and a test of the new Russian operational model built around drones, glide bombs and incremental infiltration. It is also a battle over logistics and time. Whoever controls Pokrovsk will not only hold a rail and road hub, but also shape the wider campaign for Donetsk Oblast and the survivability of Ukrainian defensive lines further west and north.

Why Pokrovsk matters

Pokrovsk, a pre-war mining and railway town of roughly 70,000 people, sits at the intersection of several key roads and on an important railway line that feeds (or has fed) much of Ukraine’s eastern front. The city’s rail and road network has been one of Kyiv’s main arteries for moving ammunition, reinforcements and casualties in and out of Donetsk Oblast.

Pokrovsk is twinned with the neighbouring mining town of Myrnohrad, slightly closer to the Russian lines and now heavily bombarded. Together they form an industrial agglomeration of pitheads, spoil heaps and factory buildings that offer a defensive maze of basements, reinforced structures and elevated observation points. A Ukrainian soldier interviewed by the BBC in 2024 described the area as highly favourable to the defender, but warned that its fall would mean “total destruction of these cities and a lot of people dead, and a lot of suffering”.

Ukrainian analysts and Western media have repeatedly called Pokrovsk “the gateway to Donetsk”. If Russia secures the city and its surrounding rail and road nodes, it will not only deprive Ukraine of a vital logistics hub but also place further pressure on other strongholds such as Chasiv Yar, which sits on commanding high ground further northeast.

It is therefore unsurprising that both sides have committed substantial forces to the sector. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently stated that Russia has concentrated some 170,000 troops in Donetsk Oblast for the push on Pokrovsk, and his Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has spoken of roughly 150,000 Russian troops focused on the Pokrovsk axis alone, giving Russia a reported local manpower advantage as high as eight to one.

From Ocheretyne to Pokrovsk: how the offensive evolved

The current battle is the culmination of a Russian campaign that began with the collapse of Ukrainian positions around Avdiivka (a western suburb of occupied Donetsk) and the breakthrough near Ocheretyne in spring 2024. That breach allowed Russian forces to push westwards into a relatively under-prepared sector, rolling up villages and small towns and slowly curving their advance towards Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.

Throughout mid-2024, Russian troops made incremental gains, seizing places such as Novohrodivka and other settlements to the south and east of Pokrovsk. By August 2024, local authorities were warning residents that they had “a week or two” left to evacuate safely as Russian troops closed in; a mandatory evacuation for children followed.

The Pokrovsk offensive formally dates from July 2024 and has since proceeded in phases. An initial period of rapid Russian advance was followed by a winter–spring stalemate in 2024–25, as Ukrainian forces stabilised a defensive arc running through villages such as Mykolaivka, Lysivka, Shevchenko, Pishchane and Kotlyne, and mounted local counter-attacks. Ukrainian airborne units briefly retook some settlements, and Russian attempts to complete a broad western encirclement stalled.

In parallel, Russia experimented with ways to outflank the main urban area. In early 2025, Ukrainian military spokesmen reported Russian attempts to bypass Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad from the south by attacking through smaller settlements rather than striking the cities head-on. A notable Russian push along the Hrodivka–Myrnohrad road ran into a prepared “kill zone” of mines and Ukrainian incendiary drones, with a mechanised column devastated before it could come close to the city.

The price of these efforts was very high. Ukrainian officials and think tank assessments suggest that Russian forces in the Pokrovsk direction may have suffered tens of thousands of casualties in the first months of 2025 alone, with daily losses at times reported in the hundreds. Those figures cannot be independently verified but are consistent with the attritional nature of the fighting and photographic evidence of destroyed Russian armour.

Russian innovation: drones, glide bombs and battlefield air interdiction

The Pokrovsk sector has also become a laboratory for Russia’s evolving operational concept. The Critical Threats Project, an NGO adjunct, describes a pattern of “battlefield air interdiction” (BAI) campaigns: extended periods in which Russian forces use drones, glide bombs, artillery and missiles to prioritise the destruction or disruption of Ukrainian logistics and drone operators, rather than immediate territorial gains.

In the Pokrovsk direction this meant months of strikes on supply routes, railway nodes and highways feeding the city, supported by elite Russian drone units. By mid-2025 it was assessed that Russia had already achieved one of its operational objectives: denying Ukraine the effective use of Pokrovsk as a logistics hub, even before the city itself was fully encircled or captured.

Only once this sustained interdiction had degraded Ukrainian defensive capacity did Russia intensify ground operations, replacing large-scale mechanised assaults with a mix of small infiltration groups and concentrated “storm” attacks in limited sectors. The same approach is now being replicated against Hulyaipole in Zaporizhzhia and around Kupiansk, suggesting that Pokrovsk is both a target in itself and a test case for a wider Russian campaign design.

Into the city: infiltration, house-to-house fighting and contested narratives

By late summer and early autumn 2025, small Russian groups began infiltrating southern Pokrovsk and nearby settlements. Open-source mapping and Ukrainian reporting describe Russian tactical groups, often of a few dozen soldiers, advancing 500–600 metres per day under cover of fog and drone-delivered resupply, with many destroyed en route by Ukrainian first-person-view drones. Only a fraction of these infiltrators reached the city itself.

In September and October Russian forces intensified their attacks on the Zelenivka district in southern Pokrovsk, reportedly capturing nearby villages, and in mid-October one unit pushed deep enough to raise a Russian flag at the Pokrovsk entrance sign on the M30 highway before a Ukrainian drone destroyed it. By 26 October 2025 the Ukrainian General Staff formally acknowledged that several hundred Russian troops were inside Pokrovsk, triggering a surge of Ukrainian reinforcements and an urban battle fought street by street and floor by floor.

From that point, Russian and Ukrainian narratives have diverged sharply. Moscow’s Defence Ministry and pro-war bloggers have begun claiming that Pokrovsk and neighbouring Myrnohrad are encircled and largely under Russian control. However Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState still shows Ukrainian lines of communication and logistics open, and Ukrainian officials deny any encirclement. Zelenskyy himself has admitted that “there are Russians in Pokrovsk” but emphasised that they were being “gradually destroyed”, with troop preservation taking priority over holding every metre.

NGO analysts, triangulating geolocated combat footage, military blogger claims and official statements provide a cautious middle view. As of 12 November, they assess that Russian forces control roughly 46 percent of Pokrovsk and about 10 percent of Myrnohrad. Those figures underline the seriousness of the situation without supporting Russian claims that the entire agglomeration has fallen.

The front today: a shrinking pocket, but still open

On 12 November, Critical Threats reported new geolocated evidence that Russian forces had recently advanced in northern Pokrovsk, while also claiming to have captured the village of Sukhyi Yar to the south-east and to have pushed forward near Rodynske to the north and in settlements to the south-west. These moves appear designed to squeeze the remaining Ukrainian pocket and interdict the last secure roads into Myrnohrad and further west.

At the same time, the same assessment notes footage suggesting that Ukrainian forces still hold, or have even regained, some positions in northern Pokrovsk and the Zakhidnyi district of central Myrnohrad which Russian sources had previously claimed. Ukrainian airborne units report that Russian troops have established firing positions in multiple parts of Pokrovsk and are mounting a large, multi-day motorised assault using lighter vehicles along the M30 Selydove–Pokrovsk highway that cuts through the city. Ukrainian defenders insist that logistics into Pokrovsk continue, albeit under constant fire.

Russian sources claim that glide-bomb strikes and drones are hitting the remaining ground lines of logistics to Myrnohrad. Ukrainian soldiers and drone-unit spokesmen counter that supplies are still arriving, though they describe a “chaotic” environment in which both sides’ positions shift block by block and Russian infiltration groups have to be hunted down in basements and industrial zones.

In the wider sector, Russian forces continue to advance, albeit slowly, in the countryside east and south of the Pokrovsk–Myrnohrad urban area, attempting to cut remaining roads northwards towards Dobropillia and westwards towards Selydove and the next defensive line. One recent briefing summarises Ukrainian claims of gains near Dobropillia to the north of Pokrovsk, even as Russia applies immense pressure around Pokrovsk itself.

Hence as of 13 November there is no evidence of a completed encirclement, but the Ukrainian pocket centred on Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad is clearly shrinking and increasingly vulnerable.

Forces, attrition and the question of withdrawal

The balance of forces around Pokrovsk is stark. Zelenskyy’s figure of 170,000 Russian troops in Donetsk Oblast devoted to the renewed offensive, much of it concentrated on Pokrovsk, contrasts with Ukraine’s well-documented manpower strain. Ukrainian officials have been candid about shortages of infantry and the impact of nearly four years of war on mobilisation and morale.

At the same time, the Pokrovsk fight illustrates Ukraine’s continued qualitative advantages in small-unit tactics and drone warfare. Russian attempts at mechanised thrusts along roads like Hrodivka–Myrnohrad have repeatedly been shredded by coordinated minefields, artillery and first-person-view drones. Russian forces have adapted by sending smaller, lighter motorised columns and infiltration teams, but this in turn reduces the speed at which they can exploit local breakthroughs.

Casualty estimates for the sector are heavily politicised, but Ukrainian and Western analytical sources converge on the idea that Russian losses have been extremely high, especially in the winter months of 2025 when frontal assaults have run into entrenched Ukrainian defences and mine belts. The Russian command appears willing to bear this cost to secure a politically marketable victory before the end of the year.

Critical Threats Project's latest assessment is blunt: Russian forces “will likely collapse the pocket around Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad”, but the operational significance of that success will depend heavily on whether Ukraine can conduct an orderly withdrawal and establish a new line, and whether Russia can then exploit the collapse with a rapid pursuit or only grind forward slowly against new defences. Ukraine has previously chosen to abandon cities such as Severodonetsk and Avdiivka in order to save troops for later battles; the same logic may ultimately apply to Pokrovsk if the corridor becomes untenable.

Humanitarian toll

The humanitarian consequences of the battle have been grave. Evacuations from Pokrovsk began in earnest in 2024, but tens of thousands of civilians remained in the city and surrounding communities well into 2025, many of them elderly or lacking the means to leave. Local authorities have reported that a significant number of children were still present even after mandatory evacuations were ordered.

Russian strikes with artillery, missiles and glide bombs have destroyed large parts of the housing stock in both Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad. Specific incidents, such as the October 2024 guided bomb strike on a high-rise building in Myrnohrad, underline the vulnerability of civilians living in multi-storey Soviet-era blocks. Repeated attacks on energy and water infrastructure across Ukraine, including in eastern cities, have raised United Nations concern that this winter, forecast to be exceptionally cold, could prove deadlier for civilians than the previous one, particularly if heating systems fail in embattled towns near the front.

The social fabric of the Donetsk mining belt is being ripped apart for a second time in a decade. Pokrovsk, once the coal-mining capital of government-held Donbas and home to Ukraine’s largest producer of coking coal, has seen its industrial base heavily damaged and much of its skilled workforce dispersed. Even if the city remains in Ukrainian hands, rebuilding its economic role will take years; if it falls under Russian occupation, depopulation and militarisation are likely to follow the pattern of Mariupol and other seized cities.

Wider strategic implications

The battle for Pokrovsk cannot be viewed in isolation. It intersects with several broader trends in the war.

First, it demonstrates the coming to maturity of Russia’s drone-centred war-fighting model. Moscow’s new Unmanned Systems Forces, integrating drone units as a separate service, reflects the importance attached to systems that can conduct reconnaissance, strike logistics and support infiltration across the entire front. Pokrovsk is one of the main arenas where this approach has been refined.

Secondly, the siege has forced Kyiv into a painful balancing act between holding critical ground and preserving forces for future operations. Each month that Pokrovsk holds ties down tens of thousands of Russian troops and absorbs vast quantities of Russian munitions, but it also consumes Ukrainian brigades that might otherwise be rotated or reconstituted. Decisions about whether to stand, counter-attack on the edges of the Russian salient, or fall back to a new line, will shape Ukraine’s ability to resist future Russian offensives elsewhere.

Thirdly, Pokrovsk has become a barometer of Western support. Ukrainians and many international commentators see Russia’s ability to mount such a large operation after nearly four years of war as a direct consequence of Moscow’s mobilisation and industrial ramp-up, contrasted with slower and more hesitant Western decisions on ammunition production and air defence resupply. The battle’s outcome will feed into ongoing debates in European and American capitals about long-term commitments to Ukraine.

Finally, what happens in Pokrovsk will shape the geography of any future negotiations. If Ukraine manages an orderly withdrawal and establishes a viable new defensive line further west, Russia’s gains may be operationally limited and politically tarnished by extremely high casualties. If however the pocket collapses in disarray and Russia can rapidly push onwards north, northeast or west along the road–rail network, Moscow will be able to present Pokrovsk as the cornerstone of a broader strategic turn in its favour.

Conclusion

As of 13 November 2025, the battle for Pokrovsk is finely poised but trending in Russia’s favour. Russian forces have secured large swathes of the city and parts of neighbouring Myrnohrad, are steadily tightening their grip on the remaining supply routes, and appear willing to pay a very high price in lives and equipment to claim a major victory in Donetsk.

Ukraine, for her part, has inflicted severe attrition on the attackers, innovated with drones and carefully targeted artillery, and preserved the core of her forces in the sector even as she loses ground. The defenders still hold a significant part of Pokrovsk and most of Myrnohrad, and retain at least one functioning corridor for supplies and potential withdrawal.

The next weeks will likely decide whether Pokrovsk becomes another symbol of heroic defence followed by withdrawal, like Severodonetsk or Avdiivka, or whether Ukrainian forces manage to stabilise the line and force Russia into yet another costly, inconclusive urban siege. Whatever the immediate outcome, the struggle for this battered mining town has already reshaped the eastern theatre and will echo in the strategic choices both sides make as the war grinds into yet another winter.