Ukraine’s vital eastern town in Russian sights

The city of Pokrovsk performs an important function as a logistics hub utilized by Ukrainian forces within the jap area of Donbas. It is residence to a key railway station, and it’s positioned on the intersection of a number of vital roads.

Russian forces have for months sought to seize the city, however their advance has quickened this month and they’re now considered lower than 10km (6 miles) away.

Before the warfare, Pokrovrsk was residence to some 69,000 residents, with lots of them employed in coal mining, metallurgy and machine-building.

Thousands left in current months because the Russians superior, however now households with youngsters have been ordered to evacuate too. Civilians had solely every week or two to get out, Serhiy Dobriak warned final Monday.

Ukraine had hoped that by seizing territory in Russia’s Kursk area it might have the ability to divert Russian troops away from their jap advance, however that has not occurred. If something the Russian offensive on Pokrovsk, and Toretsk additional to the north east, has intensified.

“Pokrovsk is an important hub, a centre of defence. If we lose Pokrovsk, the whole entrance line will crumble,” army professional Mykhaylo Zhyrokhov warned.

Ukraine depends in town’s rail and highway infrastructure to supply provides and reinforcements to its troops on the jap entrance line, in addition to to evacuate the wounded.

Losing Pokrovsk to Russian forces would imply these very important army duties would turn out to be way more sophisticated.

It would additionally improve the danger to different strategically vital cities, reminiscent of Chasiv Yar, which sits atop commanding heights giving management over the broader space.

“If they reduce our logistics, then Chasiv Yar shall be doomed,” says analyst Pavlo Narozhny. “It shall be a matter of time earlier than we’ll have to tug out of it as a result of we cannot have the ability to provide our fighters there.”

Pokrovsk has all the time performed the function of an vital railway centre serving the wants of Ukraine’s closely industrialised east.

In truth, it grew round a station constructed within the late nineteenth Century.

It grew to become often known as the coal-mining capital of Ukraine after the seize in 2014 of Donetsk, the primary metropolis of Donbas, which stands for “the Donetsk coal basin”.

Pokrovsk is residence to Ukraine’s largest producer of coking coal. It is significant for metallurgy, which, in flip, performs a key function within the nation’s economic system.

Metals have been Ukraine’s foremost export product earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion two and a half years in the past, accounting for 23% of whole items exports.

Their export worth has now shrunk to 1 / 4 of that degree because the nation’s business has been ravaged by the warfare.

A Ukrainian soldier stationed in Pokrovsk instructed the BBC’s Ukrainecast podcast that the big variety of industrial buildings in Pokrovsk and neighbouring cities reminiscent of Myrnohrad have been very useful to Ukrainian defences.

“They may have an enormous problem to get this space as a result of it is a very industrialised space with fairly vital defence traces,” stated the soldier, recognized as Ostap.

Asked concerning the potential penalties of the autumn of Pokrovsk, he stated: “Total destruction of those cities and lots of people lifeless, and loads of struggling.”

“After that there shall be extra cities, so I actually hope that we are going to cease them on the outskirts of Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk.”

The seize of Pokrovsk would have symbolic significance, too.

The Kremlin’s media machine would use it to counterbalance the embarrassment of Ukraine’s seize of territory in Russia’s Kusk border area.

It would even be a major step in the direction of the complete occupation of Ukraine’s Donetsk area, which Russia declared as a part of its territory again in September 2022.