FILE PHOTO: A view shows apartment buildings hit by Russian military strikes in the front line town of Pokrovsk, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov/File Photo
MOSCOW/KYIV (Reuters) -Russian and Ukrainian troops fought battles on Tuesday in the ruins of Pokrovsk, a transport and logistics hub in eastern Ukraine that Moscow has been trying to capture for over a year.
Ukraine's military said fierce fighting was under way in a part of the city that was key for Kyiv's frontline logistics. It said additional special forces had arrived there, and more weapons and equipment were being sent.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he spent the day visiting troops near Pokrovsk and in nearby areas, including Dobropillia, where Ukrainian forces are conducting a counteroffensive against Russian troops.
Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Zelenskiy said military commanders reported on "the stabilisation of the defensive line and coordination with adjacent units".
"Attention was given to strengthening our defences and providing the soldiers with everything they need".
Russia's Defence Ministry said its soldiers had cleared 35 buildings of Ukrainian troops. It also said that Russian forces were squeezing surrounded Ukrainians near the town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, about 100 miles (160 km) to the north.
Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports from either side.
On Monday, a spokesperson for the General Staff of Ukraine's military reaffirmed, in comments to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, that not a single military unit was encircled in the Pokrovsk sector.
With peace talks at an impasse in the fourth year of the war, Russia says it has the initiative on all sections of the front, yet it has not captured a major town since taking Avdiivka in early 2024. Ukraine says the fighting is largely stalemated and its territorial losses have been marginal.
ONWARD DRIVE FROM POKROVSK?
DeepState, a Ukrainian project that maps the front line based on verified open source images, on Tuesday showed that Russian forces had pushed further into Pokrovsk and its environs, though it showed much of it still in grey, beyond firm control of either side.
In an update published on Tuesday evening, DeepState said: "The situation remains critical."
It said there were districts of Pokrovsk where Russian forces were digging in and building up positions. It was no longer possible, DeepState said, to contain Russian troops in the south of the town and at least one nearby settlement was also probably lost.
Pokrovsk had a pre-war population of some 60,000, but most civilians fled long ago. Capturing it could give Moscow a platform to drive towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region which Russia wants to capture in its entirety.
Russian military blogger Rybar said on Tuesday that Moscow's control of Pokrovsk was gradually expanding but "a complete clearing of the city is still far off".
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Dan Peleschuk in Kyiv; Writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Andrew Osborn, Ros Russell, Ron Popeski and David Gregorio)
