Outflanked, overwhelmed, and almost overrun, Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold back a Russian army that has more men, more firepower, and overall momentum across frozen fields and muddy trenches in eastern Ukraine.
Pokrovsk, a city with a prewar population of 60,000, is the biggest location where Ukraine’s defenses are at risk of buckling under relentless Russian assault. It’s far from the only one, however.
Even as pressure builds for talks between Kyiv and Moscow, the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin have shown no interest in pulling any punches or considering cease-fire terms that could be acceptable to Ukraine and its Western backers.
“The war has tilted in Russia’s favor, and Russia is pressing its armaments and manpower advantage relentlessly,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote last month. “There is now little reason for Russia to negotiate, as [Putin] likely believes he can win the war — which, in his view, means the subjugation of Ukraine under Russian control.”
Here’s a look at where things stand on the battlefield at the start of the New Year.
Pokrovsk
In more tranquil times, the city on the western edges of Donetsk Oblast was known for its coal mines, coke factories, and metallurgical plants, as well as being home to a key railway juncture, and at the crossroads of several major roads. (It’s also known as the place where, in the early 20th century, composer Mykola Leontovych wrote the Christmas song known as Shchedryk in Ukrainian, but as the Carol of the Bells around the world.)
After capturing Avdiyivka to the east earlier this year, Russian forces moved west and northwest in a bid to cut Ukrainian logistics lines. Running west, the E50 highway links Pokrovsk to the larger urban center of Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth largest city. Running east and northeast, the T0504 highway links Pokrovsk to Kostyantynivka, another major railway junction that Russia is gunning for.
“The Pokrovsk direction…remains one of the most intense and contested areas of the theater,” Frontelligence Insight, an analytic organization run by a former Ukrainian reserve officer, said in a battlefield report. “Following Russian inability to seize the city directly…Russian forces have turned to a familiar tactic: flanking maneuvers.”
“The enemy is not counting on fighting in Pokrovsk right now, but is trying to bypass the city and break the supply chains,” Viktor Trehubov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Khortytsia command group, told a state-run TV broadcast on January 2.
Fear And Hope As Battle For Ukraine’s Pokrovsk Looms
Russian forces have neared the outskirts of Pokrovsk, a strategically important transportation and logistics hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Once home to more than 60,000 people before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, only a fraction of this population now remains in the embattled city. Photojournalist Serhiy Nuzhnenko recently visited Pokrovsk with a colleague from RFE/RL’s Donbas.Realities and talked to some residents who are still living there.
Liam Collins, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel, said Russian forces might try to skirt Pokrovsk in a rush to seize more territory before any peace talks: Pokrovsk itself is around 18 kilometers from the administrative border between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
What’s more likely, he said, is they want to avoid brutal urban warfare; for example, what happened in the monthslong fight to seize the city of Bakhmut.
“The Russians, like just about any army, would prefer to bypass a city, cut off the supply lines to fighters inside and wait them out and force their eventual surrender without as much of a fight,” said Collins, author of the book Understanding Urban Warfare.
Kurakhove
About 30 kilometers south of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces have tried to use the Kurakhove Reservoir, which dams the Vovcha River, and connecting waterways, to slow Russian advances. Russian forces advanced along the north side of the reservoir in late November and December, and a dam at the reservoir’s western edge was partially destroyed — it’s unclear whether by Ukraine or Russia.
On the reservoir’s southern shores, Ukrainian troops’ grip on the city of Kurakhove has slipped in the face of advancing Russian units from the east, and only the industrial districts in the western part of town remain under Ukrainian control. From the southwest, Russian forces have also threatened the H15 Donetsk–Zaporizhzhya highway, a major supply road running west out of Kurakhove.
Konrad Muzyka, a Polish-based military analyst who travels regularly to Ukraine, said Kyiv’s longstanding problems in replenishing troop strength are apparent in the Kurakhove defense.
“Although the terrain in this region favors defensive operations due to the presence of waterways, the ongoing Ukrainian personnel shortage prevents full utilization of these natural features to stall Russian advances,” he said in a post to X. “This lack of manpower also limits their ability to launch counterattacks, which could otherwise disrupt Russian momentum in the area.”
Kurakhove’s “defense is actually doomed,” said Mykhaylo Zhyrokhov, a Kyiv-based military analyst. “And now they’re maintaining its defense just for political reasons.”
“The fall of the city would be a very bad gift for the office of the presidency, it would very much drop trust ratings,” he said.
Mokri Yaly Valley
Further west from Kurakhove, the Mokri Yaly River meanders southward, crossed by a series of smaller bridges, and banked by a series of villages including Velyka Novosilka.
During their much-hyped 2023 counteroffensive, Ukrainian troops punched southward in several places, including along the Mokri Yaly Valley, advancing south of Velyka Novosilka, on the river’s east bank. But like the overall counteroffensive, the push faltered in the face of well-prepared Russian defense networks.
Russian forces pushed into the village’s eastern outskirts in early December. Further upriver, Ukrainian troops counterattacked and retook control of the village of Noviy Komar, which the important north-south O0509 road runs through, and which has the next river crossing north of Velyka Novosilka.
But the village remains heavily contested, according to open-source intelligence and Ukrainian and Russian reports, and the O0509 road is under fire from Russian artillery and drone strikes, limiting Ukraine’s ability to resupply.
Kursk
Ukrainian command has drawn plaudits in the past for innovative and improvised tactics. Repelling the bigger Russian invading force in the defense of Kyiv in the early days of the invasion stunned many – including the Kremlin. Ukraine’s creativity in the Black Sea has helped minimize Russia’s effectiveness there.
The August invasion of Russia’s Kursk region fit that pattern. But it failed to accomplish one major goal: relieving pressure elsewhere by drawing away Russian units.
Russia, meanwhile, pulled its own surprise: bringing in thousands of North Korean troops to the battlefield, a move that itself helps relieve recruiting pressure inside Russia.
Though U.S. officials last month said North Korea has suffered at least “several hundred casualties,” the North Koreans have played a key role in pushing back Ukrainian defenses in the Kursk region town of Sudzha, close to the border.
That threatens Ukrainian supply lines coming from the south, across the border.
In total, Ukrainian forces are estimated to have lost more than half of the territory they initially seized over the summer.
That ultimately could wipe another apparent goal that Ukrainian officials hoped would come from the invasion: using occupied Russian territory as a bargaining chip in future negotiations.
