The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, said that the Ukrainian military had held areas in the city of Pokrovsk since mid-November, but some military units had been ordered to withdraw from “impractical positions“ outside the city over the past week, where rotation could no longer be carried out, Reuters reported. He said that these were positions 5-7 kilometers outside the city, BTA reported.
"We continue to hold the northern part of the city, approximately to the railway line. In addition, in the western part of Pokrovsk, we have cleared and control about 54 square kilometers,“ Syrsky told Ukrainian journalists.
He added that the situation in the city is difficult, and the Russians have amassed 156,000 troops and are using fog and rain as cover.
Syrsky added that Ukrainian forces are facing some of the most serious challenges since the start of the full-scale war, Ukrinform reported.
“The enemy is intensifying offensive activities, and our response must be as effective as possible. Unmanned systems play a key role in deterring the Russian occupiers today, so we must accelerate work in this area in order to preserve the lives of the Ukrainian military and inflict maximum losses on the enemy,” said Syrsky after a meeting dedicated to the comprehensive use of unmanned aircraft.
According to him, at the current stage of the war, drones destroy about 60 percent of all enemy targets.
According to the Central Directorate for Unmanned Systems of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in November, unmanned air systems performed over 304,000 missions, and ground robotic systems - nearly 2,000 missions. At the same time, according to the command of the forces for unmanned systems, a total of about 81,500 targets were hit or destroyed by drones. Sirsky noted that this indicator has been growing steadily over the past six months.
“After a period of relative parity, we are once again ahead of the enemy in the use of so-called "first-person view drones", one of the main means of attack on the battlefield. At the same time, developments in this area require even greater coordination, speed of decision-making and consistency,“ he said.