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FOOTAGE shows troops from Ukraine’s special forces fighting Russian soldiers in a desperate battle for the fortress city of Pokrovsk.
Moscow has been pushing hard to capture Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, in Ukraine’s eastern fortress belt.
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Hundreds of Russian soldiers have surged into the urban area – dubbed the gateway to Donetsk – which Ukraine has defended for more than a year against non-stop Kremlin onslaughts.
But brave Ukrainian forces continue to defend the strategic city from falling into the hands of Russian soldiers – even though it seems inevitable.
Footage realeased by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) shows attack drones targeting multiple Russian soldiers before exploding – causing heavy Russian casualties.
One Russian soldier can be seen trying to ward off an attack drone by throwing his assault rifle.
Others can be seen kicking and throwing punches as they desperately try to escape the drone attacks.
Another video shows crack Ukrainian soldiers leaping off a Black Hawk chopper to storm Russian positions in a valiant assault.
As the battle on the ground erupted, Ukraine also launched air attacks.
They dropped bombs and deployed suicide drones on unsuspecting Russians, targeting both the soldiers and their hideouts.
The SBU said that the Ukrainian special forces of the The systematically destroy Russian troops and enemy equipment in Pokrovsk.
It said that over the past year, the unit has inflicted heavy losses on the enemy in the Pokrovsk sector, claiming roughly 9,500 enemy personnel killed, and the destruction or damage of large amounts of equipment.
“We will continue to defend our land from the Russian occupiers, who will pay with their lives for invading our territory,” the SBU said.
Russia‘s defence ministry said that its forces had advanced in the battered city and were fighting house-to-house battles in a bid to eject Ukrainian forces from the city.
Moscow says taking Pokrovsk would give it a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Russia wants to take the whole of the Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk provinces.
Ukraine still controls about ten per cent of Donbas – an area of about 1,930 square miles.
Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year, using a pincer movement to attempt to encircle it and threaten supply lines, rather than the deadly frontal assaults it employed to capture the city of Bakhmut in 2023.
If captured by the Russians, the city would be the largest in Ukraine to fall since Bakhmut in May 2023.
But Ukraine’s commanders have refused to order a retreat amid claims their troops continue to inflict eye-watering losses on Russia.
The crisis in Pokrovsk follows months of scorched earth bombardments that have turned the town into a hell scape of bombed and burned out buildings.
Sources claimed Russia’s best drone units had been hammering Ukraine’s supply lines – using tactics honed in Russia’s Kursk province, where Ukraine was forced to retreat in March.
Kyiv has acknowledged that the situation in Pokrovsk has become difficult in recent days, but says its troops are still fighting there and denies they are surrounded.
According to warbloggers and open source intelligence accounts, the Russian forces are just a few km away from closing their pincer movement around Pokrovsk and neighbouring Myrnohrad.
They are also closing in on Ukrainian forces in Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region.
Yuri Podolyaka, one of Russia’s top war bloggers, said Russia had tactical control of Pokrovsk but that in Myrnohrad, Ukrainian forces had blocked themselves behind heavy defences.
PUTIN'S PRIZE JEWEL
ON Ukraine’s bloody frontline, the besieged town of Pokrovsk, dubbed Putin’s “prize jewel”, is being fiercely defended.
The key town of Pokrovsk is strategically critical for Putin’s territorial ambitions.
It is a vital railway and transport hub – which if captured could give Russia a huge supply line advantage, intelligence officer Philip Ingram told The Sun.
Nicknamed the “gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, controlling the key crossroads city of Pokrovsk would make it lot easier for Putin to seize the rest of the area.
Detailing the gruelling battle, the military expert described it as a “cauldron” city – completely surrounded by Russian occupied land.
Ingram says: “Russia is trying to surround it [Pokrovsk] and close the sides of the cauldron in to isolate the Ukrainian troops that are stuck there.
“Ukraine has been defending it bravely for over a year now.
“This will remain Russia’s main effort in its battle to try and push the Ukrainians.
“Vladimir Putin himself has put this as something that is critically important for him.”
Comparing it to another tiresome battle fought between Russia and Ukraine, he adds: “This is another Bakhmut for the Russians.”
The fight for Bakhmut ended after months of tense fighting, bombing and drone strikes in 2023 – with some analysts describing it as the bloodiest battle of the entire war.
Ukrainian forces were also seeking to attack from the north-west.
Zelensky insisted on Monday that Russia “had no success over the past few days”.
But he added: “Pokrovsk is where 26 to 30 per cent of all frontline hostilities are taking place.
“And 50 per cent of all guided aerial bomb attacks are targeted at Pokrovsk.
“You can see how difficult it is for our soldiers.”
Pokrovsk, a road and rail hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people.
But most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated and few civilians remain amid its pulverised apartment buildings and cratered roads.
The Donbas regions was the crucible of the conflict, which began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Kyiv and Russia annexed Crimea.
Russian-backed Donbas separatists fought Ukraine’s armed forces until Russia’s 2022 invasion, after which Moscow claimed to have annexed the area.
Ukraine spent years before the 2022 invasion reinforcing a “fortress belt” including Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka.
Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, said: “If Pokrovsk falls, so does Myrnohrad, and the pocket closes,” on X.
“The city holds operational value. Its loss widens the Russian axis of advance in Donetsk west of the Kramatorsk conglomeration of towns, but it does not open those cities to be quickly taken.”
As well as trying to take the whole of Donbas, Russia has been making gradual advances in the Kharkiv and Dnipopetrovsk regions further west.
Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19 per cent of Ukraine, or some 44,800 square miles.
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