Cnn
–
Russia has raised 110,000 soldiers near Pokrovsk as part of its efforts to resume the strategic city in eastern Ukrainian, the Ukrainian military chief said on Friday.
Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Friday that the area around Pokrovsk was the “hottest point” along the front line of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) which takes place across the east.
Russian forces have been trying to capture Pokrovsk for almost a year, organizing a grinding offensive after the other. But despite a clear advantage in terms of the number of troops and weapons available, Moscow failed to resume the city.
Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly indicated that his objective was to grasp all the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk his forces occupy in part.
Kyiv and his allies accuse Putin of blocking peace efforts so that his forces can grasp more Ukrainian territory.
Although it is not a big city, Pokrovsk is on a key supply route and a railway which connect it to other military centers in the region. With Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, he formed the backbone of the Ukrainian defenses in the part of the Donetsk region which is still under the control of kyiv.
Some 60,000 people lived in Pokrovsk before the war, but the majority left in the three years which followed the launch of its large -scale invasion in February 2022.
The latest Ukraine operating coke mine was in Pokrovsk and many of its employees stayed in the region to continue. Once he was forced to close at the start of this year, they also started to leave.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a conflict instructor based in the United States, said at the end of last year that Ukrainian defensive operations in Pokrovsk had forced Russia to abandon its initial plan to resume Pokrovsk in a frontal aggression.
The ISW said that it was due to the fact that Ukrainian troops began to use drones as an integral part of their defensive strategy, successfully integrating drone operators into their land forces.
At the same time, Russia could not greatly increase the number of troops in the region, because it was trying to contain the surprise foray into the Ukrainian troops in its own territory in the southern Kursk region.
Syrskyi told journalists last week that at one point, Operation Kursk fell nearly 63,000 Russian soldiers and some 7,000 North Korean soldiers.
“This allowed us to weaken the enemy’s pressure on the main fronts and to group our troops. And the capture of Pokrovsk by the enemy, announced in September 2024, has not yet taken place, thanks in part to our Kursk operation,” he said.
Instead of continuing to attack the city directly, the Russian troops then began to surround the city of the south and northeast.
The ISW said in its last assessment that the Russian forces pursued attacks with small teams of firefighters from one to two soldiers, sometimes on a motorcycle, in vehicles and all-terrain strollers.
In a statement published on Friday, Syrksky said that Russia continued to try to go to the administrative border in the Donetsk region.
“They want to do it not only to obtain operational results, but mainly for demonstrative purposes. To achieve a psychological effect: putting the infamous of the Russian soldier ”, plant a flag and deceive another pseudo” victory “, he said.
