Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) units are counterattacking in the battleground city of Pokrovsk, and the Russian assault there will be repelled, Ukraine’s top military commander General Oleksandr Syrsky said on Monday.
“Pokrovsk is a solid fortified area. Yes, there are a few places where the Russians have managed to get through the engineering barriers [like barbed wire and minefields], but the command knows where those places are,” a Monday Syrsky statement published by Ukraine’s Army General Staff said. “The intensity of enemy attacks has decreased for now, but this does not mean that they have changed their plans. Ukraine is ready for any development.”
A strategically located logistics hub described by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a critical objective for the Kremlin campaign to conquer and annex Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Pokrovsk’s pre-war population was around 60,000.
Russian Federation forces, in early 2025, launched an offensive to capture the city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a national Nov. 7 Vblog address, said Russian forces had suffered 25,000 men dead or wounded in October alone in fighting that advanced Kremlin lines less than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) to reach Pokrovsk’s southern suburbs.
Syrsky, in parallel comments published first by the New York Post newspaper, on Monday, said the situation in the Pokrovsk defensive sector was tense but under control.
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The Kremlin has concentrated more than “150,000 men,” including mechanized groups and four naval infantry brigades, to breach Ukrainian defenses and capture the strategically important city, he said.
Maj. Andriy Kovalev, a Ukrainian Army General Staff (AGS) spokesman, in Monday comments to the independent RBC-Ukraine news agency, like Syrsky, messaged that the Ukrainian military is under heavy pressure in the Pokrovsk sector, but that Russian casualties are heavy and that Kyiv’s forces are holding their positions.
“The defense of the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration continues. The situation remains complex and dynamic. Here, the enemy is using all available reserves, but in return, he only suffers huge losses,” Kovalev said. “The day before [Sunday], new supplies of weapons and ammunition were delivered to the units defending the city. In addition, personnel rotation and evacuation of the wounded were carried out. In the same way, logistics and rotation of our units in the city of Pokrovsk is reliable.”
Both Ukrainian army spokesmen and battle information feeds from units engaged in Pokrovsk have said Ukrainian and Russian infantrymen are fighting a slow but deadly game of hide and seek and ambush inside the ruined city, with drones overhead ready to attack and kill anything that moves.
Russian military propagandist Boris Rozhin, in a Sunday article on combat in Pokrovsk, claimed Ukraine’s military leadership had lost control of the battle and that Russian forces were relentlessly gaining ground, but, like Ukrainian sources, confirmed the actual fighting in the city is being carried out by small groups of infantrymen.
“Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers are operating near Pokrovsk… But if you look at Pokrovsk through a drone camera, you’ll hardly notice any soldiers. Fighting for the city continues, but it’s not engulfed in flames, and machine gun fire is extremely rare. Both sides are keeping their main forces 10 kilometers [6 miles] from the city. Drones monitor all access roads, and only the most daring can penetrate this barrier alive… There are fewer soldiers in the city than civilians. Three men can storm one street, and the most interesting thing is that they will be fighting against three identical enemy soldiers,” Rozhin wrote in a LiveJournal post on Sunday.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in a Monday situation report, generally confirmed reports of small-scale infantry battles, rising Russian casualty counts, and Ukrainian counterattacks. The Pokrovsk battle is undecided, and renewed Russian assaults are likely, that analysis said.
“The situation in the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad area remains difficult as Ukrainian forces fight to hold the shoulders of the pocket and Russian forces continue to advance in the area. Ukrainian forces reportedly recently cleared Rodynske [north of Pokrovsk]…Ukrainian forces are simultaneously counterattacking within Pokrovsk and on its western outskirts to prevent further Russian advances on the southern shoulder of the pocket. Russian advances in northern and western Pokrovsk have slowed in recent days, likely due to continued Ukrainian efforts to counterattack [but] Russian forces continue to advance in eastern and southern Pokrovsk,” the ISW report said in part.
New video published on Sunday by Ukraine’s 425th Assault Infantry Regiment, an elite attack formation confirmed last week by Zelensky to be in action in Pokrovsk, showed two- and three-man strike teams clearing damaged homes and buildings, with bomber drones, strike drones, mortars, and artillery in support. Attacks are “careful, planned and precise,” the official content said.
Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, the AFU’s only fighting formation trained in France, confirmed joint operations with assault infantry units in the Pokrovsk sector. Most drone strikes hit Russian soldiers seemingly caught out in the open, Nov. 10 video published by that unit’s official Telegram channel showed.
Official Ukrainian claims of effective defenses and crushing Russian losses are challenged by some. During battles in 2023 and 2024, top Ukrainian military and civilian officials repeatedly declared AFU fighters would hold the line, only to see Ukrainian defenses waver and ultimately be overwhelmed by massed Russian ground attacks backed by heavy artillery and air strikes. The Ukrainian public has only found out the AFU’s worst defeats once the defeat is actually in progress, making Syrsky’s claim that Pokrovsk will hold questionable, one critic said on Tuesday.
“The enemy’s infiltration into Pokrovsk continues, where they are being detected in almost all parts of the city, and subsequently eliminated. The Russians are actively bringing in their pilot crews, who assist the infantry and also pose a significant obstacle to the advancement of Ukrainian troops and the establishment of any logistics in general. Simultaneously, the enemy is trying to bring in their mortars to put logistics under more intense fire,” wrote MP Mariana Bezhula, an outspoken critic of Syrsky and his command style.
“I’ve warned and written about this many times, but we have [Gen. Oleksandr] Syrsky and the ‘Gods’ in the General Staff, and the entire Supreme Command, where this [possible weakening of Ukrainian defenses] isn’t even considered… Mr. President, aren’t we going to look into all this?” Bezhula wrote.
Combat reports and video content geolocated to the Pokrovsk battle area over the past two weeks have generally supported AFU claims that Russian assault groups attempting to push into a Pokrovsk district, at least in some engagements, have been stopped and cut to pieces by Ukrainian drones, mortars, and artillery.
An Oct. 29-30 engagement is one of the best-documented, with geolocated Russian video reaching the public domain on Nov. 9 showing grinning Russian soldiers riding motorcycles and stripped-down automobiles towards a southeastern district of the city. Geolocated drone video recorded by Ukraine’s 4th National Guard Rubizh brigade, published on Nov. 10, showed repeated drone strikes and Russian casualties scattered along the same road.
