Ukraine will fight street to street to keep Russians out

Now facing constant bombing, soldiers and residents in the eastern Donetsk city of Pokrovsk tell Askold Krushelnycky about the drawn-out siege they are bracing themselves for

-  Askold Krushelnycky

The city of Pokrovsk, regarded as the key to controlling Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has been the prize Vladimir Putin’s troops have sought for months – one for which Moscow has already sacrificed thousands of its troops.

Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, seizing the entire Donetsk region, which has seen the most prolonged and bloodiest battles in Europe since the Second World War, has been the Kremlin’s oft-declared top priority.

Pokrovsk has stuck obstinately in Putin’s craw and in recent months, massive resources have been concentrated to try to break Ukrainian defences. Moscow’s forces have mounted often suicidal infantry assaults, without regard for casualties.

A senior military source of The Independent confirmed that elements of at least three experienced brigades, including the Azov and Kara-Dah brigades, had been deployed to stiffen the Ukrainian forces around Pokrovsk which, he said, are outnumbered 10 to one by their enemy in some places.

The source, a colonel connected to the Ukrainian general staff, said heavy battles are raging close to Pokrovsk along a line of small towns like Myrnohrad, Novohrodivka, Seldovo, Ukrainsk and Hirnyak to the southeast of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove and Vuhledar to the south.

Heavy equipment is being used to dig a crescent of defences – trenches and other fortifications – that will weave through or between those towns and villages. He said mines, some sown by drones, would disrupt Russia’s “human-wave” assaults.

The Ukrainian General Staff said yesterday that the fiercest battles are around the small town of Kurakhove, where Russian ground and air forces have launched scores of attacks each day for the past week, using their, now-routine, human wave tactics of sending men, sometimes backed by tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Most civilians have evacuated from the area but one person was killed in Kurakhove on Sunday by Russian artillery.