As the Russian ground troops invaded the city and continued to advance north, the Ukrainian authorities urged local troops to strengthen the defense line, and the two sides fought around the transport and logistics hub known as the “Donetsk Gateway.”
Russian troops advance into the city, Ukrainian military emergency reinforcement
The Seventh Rapid Response Force of the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed that the Russian combat cluster has entered the city and clearly intends to break north, attempting to eventually block the ground logistical corridor leading to Porkovsk by dispersing the Ukrainian defense forces.
In his frontline briefing, Zelensky emphasized that Russia has concentrated its main offensive forces in Pokrovsk. "Fighting in the city and surrounding roads is raging in an all-round way, and logistical supplies are facing severe challenges."
In the face of the Russian offensive, the Ukrainian army is urgently reinforcing. Battle reports posted by frontline troops on social media show that in recent days, troops and defensive equipment have been added to Pokrovsk, focusing on strengthening positions in the north and west of the city to prevent further Russian infiltration.
The Russian Ministry of Defense's report revealed that its strike group is advancing steadily, targeting Pokrovsk Railway Station, which serves as the intersection of multiple railways and roads. The station is the core node of the Ukrainian military logistics transport, and once lost, the front line will be directly cut off from the supply line.
A map of the battlefield released by the Ukrainian Deep Government shows that the "grey disputed zone" in southwest Porkovsk is significantly expanding, with the city's west and about a fifth of the south now in a state of repeated sewing on both sides, with the front just about 3 kilometers away from the city center.
Donetsk’s “logistic heart” and “economic lifeline”
The continued Russian siege of Pokrovsk stems from its irreplaceable strategic value.
This city, which had 60,000 residents before the war, is now a key transportation hub in eastern Ukraine, although it has only a permanent population of 12,000 due to the war. Five railway trunk lines and three highways meet here, and it is responsible for 70% of the Ukrainian army's eastern front line of ammunition, fuel and personnel transportation tasks, which the Russian army calls the "Gateway to Donetsk."
More importantly, Pokrovsk is a part of Ukraine's industrial system "Energy Pillar".
The Pishchane coal mine in the outskirts of the city is the only production site in Ukraine that can supply steel coal to the largest steel producer, whose production accounts for half of the company’s total coal output.
Since the Russian military launched the siege in July 2024, production in this coal mine has been interrupted many times, and production will be completely suspended in early 2025, directly impacting Ukraine's military and civilian industrial production capacity.
For the Russian military, the control of Pokrovsk was a crucial step towards achieving the goal of “complete control of Donetsk.”
At present, Russia has controlled about 75% of Donetsk's territory. Among the remaining approximately 6600 square kilometers, Pokrovsk and its surrounding areas are the core fulcrum of Ukrainian defense.
Once the city is captured, the Russian army can push directly towards Dniproborg to the west, compress the Ukrainian army's activity space in Donbas to the east, and may even trigger a "domino-like collapse" of the Ukrainian army's defense line.
Persistent and persistent struggle.
The battle of Pokrovsk was characterized by “Russian breakthroughs and Ukrainian obstructions.”
The Russian military used the tactics of infiltration by the small infantry division on foot, using the empty battlefields in the Ukrainian defense line to form a "vacuum zone", in a short period of time to deep advancement, has now established a temporary base in the northern suburbs, and by drones overtook the Ukrainian military reconnaissance division.
to take this city, Russia has 110,000 troops.Of those, 30,000 were deployed as full-time infiltration operational units, specializing in the weak links of the Ukrainian military defense.
The Ukrainian army relied on the second line of defense built from 2023 to 2024 to resist tenaciously.
The current core task of the Ukrainian army is to guard the logistics corridor and prevent the front-line troops from falling into the dilemma of "running out of ammunition and food". Once the supply line is cut off, surrounding towns such as Slavyansk and Kramatorsk will be forced to rely on hundreds of kilometers away for supplies from Kharkiv, and strategic passivity will be further intensified.
The analysis pointed out that the Russian army was eager to seize Porkovsk at a critical time to take the initiative in the negotiations; and for the Ukrainian army, the preservation of the city is not only about the situation on the battlefield, but more directly affects its right to speak in future peace talks.
At present, the two sides are still fighting street by street in the Pokrovsk district, the strategic capital of Donetsk, which has become the "wind direction" of the eastern Russian warfare.