Ukraine deploys special forces to Pokrovsk in effort to hold key city | Ukraine

Ukraine has deployed special forces to the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk in a bid to repel an intense Russian offensive involving thousands of soldiers, Kiev’s top commander said.

Increasing fighting in the strategically important city, along with an overnight wave of Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, killed six people, including two children, and knocked out power to tens of thousands, officials said Sunday.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said the killed children were 11 and 14 years old and both boys. Russia did not immediately comment but denied targeting civilians.

Dubbed the “gateway to Donetsk,” Pokrovsk lies on a key supply route for the Ukrainian military and has been in Moscow’s spotlight for more than a year as Russia has sought to control the entire eastern Donetsk region.

The capture of Pokrovsk would be Russia’s most significant territorial gain inside Ukraine since Moscow captured the devastated city of Avdiivka in early 2024.

In Kiev, at least 200 Russian soldiers breached the city’s defenses he said earlier this week. Others are approaching the outskirts in a pincer-like movement, according to battlefield maps published by the Institute for the Study of War.

The city, which was home to approximately 60,000 people before the war, is now a largely uninhabited and war-ravaged wasteland.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday that he had ordered “unified special operations forces groups” to operate in the city. “We keep Pokrovski,” Syrski said in his social media post.

Deepstate, the Ukrainian frontline map created by compiling data from open-source imagery, shows that Russian troops are in full control of a small southern part of the city, while the rest is still disputed. In a later report, Deepstate said Russian forces were still infiltrating southern areas of Pokrovsk, with a significant number of infantry units remaining inside.

Syrski added that Pokrovsk was under pressure from “thousands of enemy groups” but denied reports that Moscow had surrounded the logistics centre. “A comprehensive operation is underway to destroy and remove enemy forces from Pokrovsk,” he said.

Pokrovsk and the neighboring town of Myrnohrad “are not surrounded or blockaded, and we are doing everything we can to maintain logistics,” he said, adding that enemy units continued to “infiltrate residential areas and attempt to cut off our supply routes.”

On Saturday, Russia’s defense ministry said its soldiers killed all 11 members of the Ukrainian special forces team. A Ukrainian military official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, denied that soldiers trained to carry out covert operations using unconventional methods such as sabotage and diversion were killed and said the operation was continuing.

The Zvezda news source of the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that Ukrainian troops began to lay down their weapons in Pokrovsk on Saturday and published a video of two men who it said were Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered. It was not possible to verify the video or determine where or when it was shot.

Russia also said its troops repelled an attempt by a Ukrainian unit to escape from Hryshyne, northwest of Pokrovsk. Reuters noted that clashes in this region may indicate that Russian forces are close to cutting Ukraine’s supply lines to Pokrovsk.

The 7th Rapid Response Corps noted on Facebook that Kiev had increased the number of assault troops in the area, adding that the situation remained “difficult and dynamic” but that the army “managed to improve its tactical position in various parts of the city.”

Meanwhile, regional officials in Ukraine said an overnight drone strike set fire to an oil tanker and infrastructure in Russia’s Tuapse port, home to a major oil export terminal and a refinery owned by state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.

Unverified images on social media showed flames engulfing terminal buildings and a tanker in the Black Sea port. Russian officials said Sunday that two foreign civilian ships were damaged, but there were no casualties and the fire was extinguished.

The battle of Pokrovsk took place alongside data showing that Russia fired more missiles at Ukraine in night attacks in October than in any other month since at least the beginning of 2023.

Russia’s military fired 270 missiles in October, up 46% from the previous month, according to AFP’s analysis of daily data published by Ukraine’s air force. This was the highest figure in a month since Kiev began routinely publishing statistics at the beginning of 2023.

For the fourth consecutive time, attacks targeted Ukraine’s fragile power grid, cutting off electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. On Sunday, officials said the entire Donetsk region and about 58,000 people in the Zaporizhzhia region were without electricity.

Kiev and its supporters have described the attacks as a deliberate and cynical strategy to wear down Ukraine’s civilian population. Russia denied the accusation.

With Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press