Russian forces have surrounded the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk and control 70% of its territory, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday, but Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said Ukrainian forces were putting up strong resistance and fierce fighting was taking place in the city center, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
Moscow has been trying to establish full control of the city of Pokrovsk, for which the Russians use the Soviet-era name Krasnoarmeysk, by mid-2024 as part of its bid to seize the entire industrial region of Donbas.
Rather than attacking the city head-on, Russian forces have been using detours to gradually surround it and have begun sending in smaller, but then larger assault groups.
Moscow says that capturing Pokrovsk, which it calls the “gateway to Donetsk“, will allow it to advance north towards the two largest cities in Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control - Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.
At a news conference in Kyrgyzstan today, Putin said that Ukrainian forces in Pokrovsk and the neighboring town of Mirnograd, which Russians call Dimitrov, were in serious danger and that Ukraine was threatened with a front line breakthrough in some places.
“Krasnoarmeysk and Dimitrov are completely surrounded,” Putin told reporters, adding that Kiev was losing some of its most combat-ready troops as a result.
“Seventy percent of the territory of Krasnoarmeysk is in the hands of Russian forces. In the southern part of the city of Dimitrov, the enemy groups are surrounded. They are scattered throughout the city and our troops are systematically destroying them,” he added.
However, Sirsky said in a post on social media that Ukrainian troops were repelling attempts by Russian forces to launch new attacks on Pokrovsk and Mirnograd.
Reuters notes that it cannot independently confirm the claims about the situation on the battlefield.