Pokrovsk offensive
Based on Wikipedia: Pokrovsk offensive
The Slow Strangulation of a Ukrainian City
In the summer of 2024, a small village called Prohres became ground zero for one of the most consequential Russian advances of the entire war. Within 48 hours, airstrikes had shattered Ukrainian defensive lines, and what followed was a grinding, methodical push toward a city most people outside Ukraine had never heard of: Pokrovsk.
Why does Pokrovsk matter? It sits at a critical junction in western Donetsk Oblast, the kind of logistics hub that wars pivot around. Roads and railways converge there. Lose Pokrovsk, and the Ukrainian defensive architecture across the entire eastern front begins to unravel.
This is the story of how Russia spent more than a year trying to take it.
The Aftermath of Avdiivka
To understand the Pokrovsk offensive, you need to know what came before. In February 2024, after months of brutal urban combat, Russian forces finally captured the city of Avdiivka. It was a pyrrhic victory in many ways—Russia had thrown waves of soldiers at fortified Ukrainian positions for the better part of a year. But once Avdiivka fell, it created an opening.
Russian forces pushed northwest, forming what military analysts call a salient—essentially a bulge in the front line that juts into enemy territory. Salients are dangerous for the attacker because they can be pinched off from multiple sides. But they're also dangerous for the defender because they represent a concentrated point of pressure.
By July 2024, that pressure was bearing down on Pokrovsk.
The Fall of Prohres
July 17, 2024. Russian forces began their assault on Prohres, a village that would become the hinge point of the entire offensive. The engagement lasted just two days.
What happened at Prohres illustrates the brutal calculus of this war. Russian aircraft pounded Ukrainian positions with such intensity that two elite brigades—the 110th and 47th Mechanized—collapsed and retreated. The 47th Brigade, notably, was one of the units equipped with American M1 Abrams tanks. They lost at least two of them at Prohres.
Simultaneously, Russian troops moved on Lozuvatske, just north of Prohres. Within days, they had encircled Ukrainian positions between the two villages. According to some estimates, potentially hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers from the 31st Mechanized Brigade found themselves surrounded.
They escaped. Barely. Coordinated artillery and drone strikes punched a hole in the encirclement around July 26, allowing the trapped soldiers to withdraw. But the damage was done. The front line that had held for months was now in motion.
The Numbers Game
By early August, the disparity in forces became starkly apparent. Forbes estimated that Russia had assembled roughly 40,000 troops—twenty regiments and brigades—for the push toward Pokrovsk. Ukraine had perhaps 12,000 soldiers from six brigades to stop them.
That's more than a three-to-one advantage. In military doctrine, a three-to-one ratio is generally considered the minimum needed for a successful attack against prepared defenses. Russia had it and then some.
The Russian advance accelerated. Village after village fell in rapid succession: Vesele, Vovche, Novoselivka Persha. By August 2, Russian forces were reportedly 18 kilometers from Pokrovsk. A week later, that distance had shrunk to 16 kilometers.
Ukrainian commanders attributed the collapse to a toxic combination: insufficient troops, inadequate equipment, poor training, and plummeting morale. When soldiers see the unit next to them break and run, the urge to do the same becomes overwhelming.
The Kursk Gambit
Then Ukraine did something unexpected. In mid-August 2024, Ukrainian forces launched an audacious incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast—the first time a foreign army had occupied Russian soil since World War Two.
The strategic logic was elegant: force Russia to divert troops from eastern Ukraine to defend its own territory. It was a calculated gamble that Pokrovsk could hold while Russia scrambled to respond.
It didn't work. At least not for Pokrovsk.
American officials reported that Russia withdrew only a limited number of units from the east. Rather than weakening the Pokrovsk push, Russian command doubled down, reinforcing their forces in the Pokrovsk direction rather than stripping them for the Kursk defense.
By August 13, the Pokrovsk sector saw 52 battles in a single day—more than a third of all combat engagements across the entire front line. A representative of the 110th Mechanized Brigade, still reeling from Prohres, said the situation had actually deteriorated since Ukraine's Kursk incursion. Ammunition shortages persisted. Russian attacks kept coming.
Ten Kilometers
August 15, 2024. Serhii Dobriak, head of the Pokrovsk City Military Administration, delivered a grim announcement: Russian forces were now just 10 kilometers from the city center. He urged all civilians to evacuate.
A Ukrainian soldier described the situation in stark terms. Russian infantry outnumbered Ukrainian defenders by ten to one. Assaults continued throughout the entire day, every day. There was no respite.
The Institute for the Study of War, a respected American think tank, assessed that Russia had made Pokrovsk its primary offensive objective. Everything else was secondary.
Within days, Dobriak announced that families with children would be forced to evacuate—they would have at most two weeks to leave. Those in the neighboring city of Myrnohrad had only days. Utilities and services in Pokrovsk would begin winding down within a week.
A city was dying in slow motion.
The Collapse of Novohrodivka
Late August brought one of the most dramatic collapses of the campaign. Novohrodivka, a city east of Pokrovsk, fell in what the Kyiv Post called "72 hours."
The speed was shocking even to seasoned observers. Russian forces had captured most of the eastern portion of the city by August 24. By August 25, they controlled more than half. By August 28, the city was gone.
The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Ukraine had essentially chosen not to defend Novohrodivka. Facing a four-to-one disadvantage in firepower, Ukrainian commanders apparently concluded that fighting for the city would only result in more dead soldiers without changing the outcome. Better to withdraw and live to fight another day.
A prominent Ukrainian journalist called the situation "catastrophic" and criticized the absence of promised fortifications. Where were the defensive lines that were supposed to slow the Russian advance?
Two Offensives, One Goal
By late August, analysts began to discern Russia's broader strategy. Moscow wasn't pursuing a single offensive toward Pokrovsk—it was running two simultaneous operations.
The first pushed directly toward Pokrovsk through the defensive line running from Hrodivka to Novohrodivka. The immediate objective was to capture Myrnohrad first, then advance into Pokrovsk's outskirts.
The second pushed south, toward a defensive line running from Ukrainsk to Hirnyk to Selydove. This wasn't about taking Pokrovsk directly. It was about expanding the salient, reducing the risk of a Ukrainian counterattack against the base of the Russian bulge, and potentially opening a new axis of advance toward Kurakhove, another key city further south.
The two efforts were mutually reinforcing. Success in one would make success in the other more likely. And both were seen as prerequisites for the eventual assault on Pokrovsk itself.
The Shrinking Salient
September 2024 brought a new crisis: the risk of encirclement.
Southeast of Pokrovsk, elements of four Ukrainian brigades—the 59th Motorized Infantry, the 68th Jager, the 117th Territorial Defense, and the 15th National Guard—found themselves in a precarious position. They occupied a salient of their own, roughly 78 square kilometers of territory east of the Vovcha River and north of Krasnohorivka.
The integrity of this entire position reportedly rested on a single unit: the 25th Airborne Brigade, defending the town of Ukrainsk. If Ukrainsk fell, the salient would collapse, and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers could find themselves cut off.
The New York Times reported that the Ukrainian salient had been "nearly encircled" by Russian forces. It was becoming a pocket.
Pokrovsk Empties
By early September, Pokrovsk was becoming a ghost city. Hospitals closed. Supermarkets shuttered. Their contents were loaded onto trucks and transported away from the approaching front.
The railway station—the city's lifeline for evacuation—was forced to close on September 5 due to what officials called a "worsening security situation." Civilians were directed to buses that would take them to Pavlohrad, further from the front.
According to Donetsk Oblast governor Vadym Filashkin, 26,000 people still remained in Pokrovsk. Some couldn't leave. Some wouldn't.
Stall and Counterattack
Something unexpected happened in early September: the Russian advance toward Pokrovsk itself began to stall.
Ukrainian brigades newly deployed to the area launched counterattacks. In Selydove, where Russian momentum had slowed. In Halytsynivka. In Mykhailivka. The direct push on Pokrovsk was losing steam.
But the southern prong of the Russian offensive continued. Pressure mounted on Ukrainsk and Hirnyk. Analysts assessed that capturing these two cities would allow the southern advances to evolve into an attack on Kurakhove, opening an entirely new front.
The Russian strategy was becoming clear: if the direct assault on Pokrovsk wasn't working, outflank it. Stretch Ukrainian defenders thin across multiple axes. Eventually, something would break.
Into the City
The grinding continued through the fall of 2024 and into 2025. Village by village, position by position, Russian forces inched closer.
In early November 2025—more than fifteen months after the fall of Prohres—Russian forces were reported to have entered Pokrovsk itself. The city that had been the objective of this entire bloody campaign was finally being contested.
By then, it was largely deserted. The 26,000 residents who had remained in September 2024 had dwindled further. Those who could leave, had. Those who stayed faced Russian occupation or the chaos of urban combat.
Fighting continued in and around the otherwise empty city.
What the Pokrovsk Offensive Reveals
The battle for Pokrovsk illustrates several uncomfortable truths about this war.
First, numbers matter. Russia's willingness to absorb catastrophic casualties allows it to maintain force ratios that Ukraine cannot match. When you have a three-to-one, or four-to-one, or ten-to-one advantage, fortifications and tactical skill can only delay the inevitable.
Second, attrition warfare is asymmetric in unexpected ways. Ukraine's incursion into Kursk was brilliant as a psychological and political operation, but it failed to relieve pressure on Pokrovsk. Russia simply chose to accept the embarrassment of occupied home territory rather than weaken its eastern offensive.
Third, defensive lines require defenders. The promised fortifications that Ukrainian journalists lamented were presumably built—but without sufficient troops to man them, they were just obstacles to be bypassed.
Finally, cities die before they fall. Long before the first Russian soldier entered Pokrovsk, the city had already ceased to function. Hospitals closed. Shops emptied. Train stations went silent. The capture, when it came, was almost an afterthought. The city had already been killed by proximity to the front.
The War Continues
As of late 2025, fighting in and around Pokrovsk continues. The city's strategic value—its road and rail connections—remains significant, even if most of the infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.
Russia has paid an enormous price for its slow advance. Thousands of soldiers dead, hundreds of armored vehicles destroyed, months of effort for each few kilometers gained. But Russia has depth: more soldiers, more equipment, more tolerance for casualties than its opponent.
Ukraine has fought with skill and courage, trading space for time, withdrawing when necessary to preserve forces for another day. But there is only so much space to trade. And Pokrovsk, sitting at that critical junction of roads and railways, has always been a place where running out of space would hurt.
The offensive that began with the fall of Prohres in July 2024 has achieved its primary objective. Pokrovsk is contested. The question now is what comes next—and whether Ukraine can stabilize a front line that has been in motion for far too long.