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Russian troops destroyed or captured several Ukrainian positions near the eastern city of Pokrovsk, kyiv’s military said on Wednesday, as Moscow advances on the strategic logistics center hosting a unique Ukrainian coke mine.
After months of accelerated advances toward Pokrovsk, Moscow’s forces are now just three kilometers from the city’s southern outskirts, according to Ukraine’s DeepState, which maps the front lines using open sources.
“As a result of prolonged fighting, two of our positions were destroyed and one was lost. Measures are currently being taken to restore the positions,” Nazar Voloshyn, Ukraine’s military spokesman for the Eastern Front, said in televised comments.
The fall of Pokrovsk, a major logistics center for the Ukrainian military, would amount to the biggest military setback for kyiv in months. The city is also home to a mine that is Ukraine’s only domestic supplier of coking coal for its once-giant steel industry.
Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said he had visited a Marine unit in the Pokrovsk sector and observed the conditions the military faced against “a superior enemy, primarily, in terms of manpower.”
“Unconventional decisions must be made to improve the resilience of our defense and ensure more effective destruction of the occupiers,” he wrote on Facebook, without mentioning when the visit took place.
“The battles are exceptionally fierce. The Russian occupiers are throwing all available forces forward, trying to break the defenses of our troops.”
Months of fierce fighting
Pokrovsk, located about 18 kilometers from the border of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, has for months been the area of the fiercest battles in Russia’s 33-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In October and November, the Russian army advanced toward the city at its fastest pace since the first months of the war, analysts said. Ukraine says Russia has suffered some of the war’s biggest losses to date.
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Both Ukraine and Russia have their eyes on the growing prospect of boosting peace talks, as US President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20, having called for an immediate ceasefire. and a quick end to the war.
kyiv has urged its allies to put it in the strongest possible position on the battlefield before talks take place.
Russia, which Ukraine says has more than 70,000 troops on the Pokrovsk front, has advanced rapidly toward Shevchenko, a village south of Pokrovsk, in recent weeks.
Their forces are trying to establish themselves in the village and are sending reconnaissance and sabotage groups, spokesman Voloshyn said. Ukraine is holding them back for now, he added.
The coal mine, which was still in operation on December 6, is located 10 kilometers west of Pokrovsk, across from where Russian troops are advancing.
