After Pokrovsk?
No defensive lines and flat farmland? Flag-raising suicide missions costing 'dozens of lives'. Russian technological superiority - the Octopus grows.
How goes things in the city of Pokrovsk? On the weekend, we saw that Ukrainian media was reporting 60% of the city was under Russian control, and over a thousand Ukrainian troops faced encirclement.
But high command remains optimistic. A few hours ago, the Ukrainian General Staff denied encirclement at Pokrovsk, claiming that ‘measures are being taken to block the enemy, who is trying to infiltrate and accumulate’, with Ukrainian forces conducting ‘strike and reconnaissance operations.
Zelensky is also in high spirits. On November 4, he claimed that Ukrainian troops were not encircled in Pokrovsk, and that there are only ‘300’ Russian troops there. In his view, Russian forces have had no success there for several days.
Zelensky also stated that Ukraine’s 245th assault regiment was at work in the area. This is notable - I have been writing quite a lot recently about the newly-formed assault forces. Critics in Ukraine (and the BBC) claim that the assault forces recklessly sacrifice their troops in suicide missions to stem Russian advances.
Anyway, there is quite a lot of reason to believe that Zelensky’s optimism is misplaced. At that same November 4 interview, Zelensky also claimed that the Ukrainians had pushed back Russian troops in the city of Kupyansk.
In response, MP Mariana Bezuhla fired back. She is generally considered a Zelensky loyalist. Yet now, she accuses him of ‘outright lying’ about the real situation at Pokrovsk and Kupyansk. Of course, she places much of the blame for this on military high command, particularly in the person of commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky, who she blames all ills. ‘This rotten falsehood, which reeks of the General Staff’s headquarters culture, is presented to the President’. Nevertheless, she still castigates Zelensky for lacking the ‘will’ to look truth in the face.
In the face of criticism, Ukrainian high command is still trying to come out with some ‘victories’. On November 6, the 425th assault brigade announced it had planted a Ukrainian flag in the center of Pokrovsk. Seems like a very strategically significant operation. No wonder the assault forces are denigrated as ‘meat storm’ units.
Indeed, the top comment on the Ukrainian nationalist OSINT channel DeepState (780,000 subscribers) expressed the following sentiment:
Another death march by the 425th? Nothing new, but I feel bad for the boys
Military serviceman Mykola Vorozov pilloried the flag-raising stunt, hypothesizing that dozens may have died for it:
The Azovite ultranationalist sergeant who runs the telegram ‘Tales of the IV Reich’ was unimpressed. He wrote this on November 6:
Everything about Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad is clear. There’s no miracle to expect. But even a week from now, the official reports will still mention some observation post in a basement, heroically held by a few infantrymen — just so that the city can still be marked at least as “gray” on the map, and no one has to redraw the map for Trump.
Officer, one of Ukraine’s most popular military bloggers, was also depressed about the attempts to save face a few hours ago:
A seemingly more significant ‘victory’ took place to the north of Pokrovsk. Over the past few days, Russia’s Dobropillia salient that emerged back in August finally fell to Ukrainian forces. At least, so they claim, though the area is likely still very contested.
And as the pro-Kiev Russian historian Nikolay Mitrokhin wrote on November 5 (he currently lives in Germany), it seems most likely that the Dobropillia salient was merely a distraction from Pokrovsk.
After all, Pokrovsk is a city with a pre-war population of 60,000 and crucial industrial assets. The Dobropillia salient, while it demonstrated the ease with which Russian troops could launch through undermanned Ukrainian positions, only comprised a few miniscule ‘villages’ with a handful of pre-war residents. As Mitrokhin points out, it was mainly open steppe.
The German publication Bild was also less sanguine than Zelensky in its assessment of the situation. In a November 5 article, Bild cited sources in Ukraine’s military and intelligence forces, who claimed that ‘fears are growing of a serious military defeat’ in Pokrovsk and the neighbouring city of Pokrovsk.
The soldiers Bild talked to don’t share Zelensky’s upbeat attitude towards the situation:
A soldier stationed near Pokrovsk told BILD: “The situation is extremely bad. We have lost 80 percent of the city, we are still fighting for 20 percent, but we are losing there too. The guys in Myrnohrad and further south are in even worse shape; they are practically surrounded.”
On the 31st, Ukrainian sources spoke of 60% of the city lost. Now it’s 80%. And the remaining 20% doesn’t actually seem to be controlled by Ukrainian troops, but merely under contestation by Ukrainian drones and artillery.
Whatever Ukrainian troops in or around Pokrovsk find themselves in extreme danger:
This was confirmed by a Ukrainian soldier in Myrnohrad, about 7 kilometers east of Pokrovsk. He told BILD: “Even if we received an order to withdraw, we probably wouldn’t survive it. Probably none of us would reach Rodynske alive. We’d better stay put and let ourselves be freed or captured eventually.”
The alleged counter-offensives were also “too little, too late,” an officer told BILD. “They should have done that a month ago, when the first Russians entered the city. Now it’s useless and only costs us more men,” said the officer, who, like all the other soldiers involved, wished to remain anonymous.
If you ask me, a situation in which it is impossible to retreat from positions sounds quite like encirclement to me. Of course, drones can deliver some supplies. Hitler also kept on sending planes to resupply Wehrmacht forces surrounded at Stalingrad.
As you might imagine, Ukrainian troops aren’t thrilled about the situation. Bild’s military sources even ‘once against accuse president Volodymyr Zelensky of failing to ensure that the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops’, which ‘should have taken place long ago’.
Indeed, ‘once again’. Because this exact same situation has already occurred so many times over the past two years - in Severodonetsk, Kurakhove, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kursk, Velika Novosilka… the list goes on.
And most famously, as Bild notes, in the 2023 battle for Bakhmut:
Back in 2023, Zelenskyy faced massive criticism for his prolonged insistence on defending the city of Bakhmut. At that time, there was reportedly a direct conflict with the military leadership, who had advocated for an earlier withdrawal.
A Ukrainian diplomat told BILD: “Yes, the pattern is similar. We defend ourselves heroically, claim that Russia is in a worse position than it says – and then we withdraw.” Regarding the current fighting, he said: “You always see reconnaissance units deployed to defend a city when a battle is nearing its end.”
Bild seems to be implying that the Bakhmut question was one of the factors leading to Zelensky’s dismissal of then-commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny. He was replaced with Zelensky yes-man Oleksandr Syrsky. Syrsky commanded the failed defense of Bakhmut. His callousness towards losses earned him the nickname ‘butcher’.
Bild’s sources among ‘Zelensky’s supporters’ apparently believe that Pokrovsk needs to be held ‘despite losses’ not just for military reasons, but for political ones - ‘to avoid losing face internationally, particularly with US President Donald Trump.’
No doubt the men dying in Pokrovsk are glad that their deaths will not be in vain — the chance of convincing Trump that Ukraine isn’t losing. No doubt this will be very convincing for Mr Trump, and he will soon send everything America has to Kiev.
Muchnoy Jugend, a serviceman known for his honesty, was also outraged with the losses suffered by troops surrounded at Pokrovsk and nearby Myrnohrad. This is from November 5:
After Pokrovsk
Are there any military reasons to hold onto Pokrovsk despite the cost? In what follows, we will interrogate Ukrainian fears that Russia will be able to move far faster after taking Pokrovsk. Ukrainian soldiers point to the flat farmland beyond Pokrovsk and the lack of reliable defensive lines. Over the past month, most of Russia’s gains have been in the flat, agricultural spaces of the Dnepropetrovsk region - terrain very similar to the area west of Pokrovsk.
And beyond Ukrainian incompetence and geography, they blame Russian technological superiority. With Russian drones strangling Ukrainian logistics, the latter’s sparse troops find themselves lacking supplies and encircled.
Lets begin with Ukrainian military analyst Sergei Bezkrestnov. On November 5, he wrote a large post to his 140,000 subscribers, arguing that after Pokrovsk, Russian troops will be able to easily advance through the flat farmland beyond.
