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Kyiv has denied claims that Russia has captured the key strategic town in the Donbas
James C. Reynolds,Alex CroftTuesday 02 December 2025 16:32 GMTComments
CloseRussian troops roll into Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in 'Mad Max-style'
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Vladimir Putin on Tuesday claimed full control over the key Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk - though the claim was instantly denied by Kyiv.
For months, Russian and Ukrainian forces have fought house-to-house for the so-called fortress city in eastern Ukraine, once a vital logistics hub for the Ukrainian army, now a ruin separating the Russians from what remains of free Donetsk.
Victory would hand leverage to Putin at a critical time in the war, as a delegation of senior officials from Washington arrives in Moscow to talk through the narrowing paths to peace.
Still, nothing is decided; Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps hit back on Tuesday with blistering attacks in the south as corps in the north dug in and held their positions.
Ukraine continues to overachieve in resisting Putin’s unrelenting pressure on the Donbas, but the loss of a strategic centre at this moment in deliberations would weaken Kyiv’s position as it pleads for guarantees on its future.
open image in galleryA soldier holds a Russian flag in Pokrovsk (Russian Defence Ministry)Where is Pokrovsk?
Pokrovsk is a road and rail junction in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region with a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Today, most civilians have fled. All children have been evacuated.
It was previously an important logistics hub for the Ukrainian army, as it is situated on a key road the troops used to supply other embattled outposts along the frontline.
Ukraine's only mine producing coking coal - used in its once vast steel industry - is around six miles (10 km) west of Pokrovsk. A technical university in Pokrovsk, the region's largest and oldest, now stands abandoned, damaged by shelling.
Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with Finnish open source intelligence organisation Black Bird Group, says Pokrovsk does not hold the strategic importance it once did, due to fierce fighting and significant destruction in the town.
“Currently it’s a battlefield full of destroyed buildings. So the role of Pokrovsk is that Ukraine tries to hold on to the city so that they can keep the corridor to Myrnohrad open, to delay the Russian advance as much as possible,” he said.
Why does Russia want Pokrovsk?
Russia wants to take the whole of the Donbas region, which comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still controls about 10 per cent of Donbas - an area of about 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) in western Donetsk.
President Vladimir Putin says Donbas is now legally part of Russia. Kyiv and most Western nations reject Moscow's seizure of the territory as an illegal land grab.
Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed "the gateway to Donetsk" by Russian media, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow its most important single territorial gain inside Ukraine since it took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.
It would also would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk - Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
open image in galleryRussian soldiers entering the town of Pokrovsk (Social media)But advancing towards these cities would be “really costly and will take months and months, at least, at the current rate of advance,” Mr Kasetehelmi said.
“In regional warfare, there can be events where gradual events become sudden, and then something actually changes rapidly. But I don't see that that happening in the near future,” he added.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, says capturing Pokrovsk would hand Russia an important win for operational reasons, but would leave Russia a lot of work to do when it came to taking control of the rest of Donetsk.
open image in galleryA Ukrainian soldier walks past damaged buildings in central Pokrovsk (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)What is happening now?
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military dismissed a report by Moscow that Russian forces had captured Pokrovsk.
"The brazen statements of the leadership of the aggressor country about the 'capture' of these settlements by the Russian army do not correspond to reality," Kyiv's General Staff said in a statement, referring also to the cities of Vovchansk and Kupiansk.
Ukrainian forces were still holding the northern part of the city and had attacked Russian forces in southern Pokrovsk, the Ukrainian military told Reuters.
A video released by the Russian Defence Ministry showed troops holding the Russian flag aloft in a square in what the news agency confirmed was the city centre as what sounded like artillery fire echoed in the distance. It is unclear when the video was filmed.
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