As Russian troops chart a steady advance in east Ukraine, worn-down Ukrainian forces are struggling to plug holes in their front-line defences. At stake is the “fortress” town of Pokrovsk, a transport and logistics hub that could give Russia a clear pathway to advance in the Donetsk region and beyond.
On the front lines in Donbas, the situation “remains difficult”, Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrsky said in a Telegram message on November 2. Ukrainian forces there are “holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives since the beginning of the full-scale invasion”, he added.
A renewed push by Russian forces that began in springtime now seems to be bearing fruit in east Ukraine.
The Russian army advanced 478 km² into Ukrainian territory in October, according to an AFP study analysing data from the American thinktank the Institute for the Study of War. This is the largest advance it has made since the early days of the full-scale offensive in Ukraine in spring 2022.
‘A war of attrition’
In recent months, Russian forces have maintained “a huge continuous offensive and continuous pressure” in east Ukraine, says Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“This is a war of attrition. Capabilities are degrading on both sides,” says Gressel. “It’s a race to see who will reach the bottom first – and on many issues, it seems that will be Ukraine, especially on heavy equipment. Armoured fighting vehicles haven’t been replaced by Western deliveries. And, of course, personnel is a critical issue.”
Russia “doesn’t have more troops or weapons”, says Dr Huseyn Aliyev, senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow and specialist on the war in Ukraine. “But the real shift, where things have changed quite dramatically, is on the Ukrainian side where there’s a big problem in their defensive line.”
Essentially, territorial gains are less a show of superior Russian force than an indication that Ukraine’s defences are collapsing. Ukrainian front-line forces are facing the enemy with ever dwindling arms and personnel, slowly but surely unable to plug the holes that Russia is inflicting on its defensive line.
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According to Aliyev, “poor organisation” of troops is one of the biggest problems the Ukrainian army faces.
For two years, experienced regiments that have been fighting against Russia have received hardly any reinforcements. And instead of fortifying these existing units, “new brigades have been created with less experienced officers and quickly trained troops, mostly from recent mobilisation efforts. They don’t have the same level of morale as the veterans, but these are the brigades sent to stop the Russian advance,” says Aliyev.
The result is that battle-hardened units are depleted and new units deployed on the frontlines are critically inexperienced.
‘A failed gambit’
Proof of Ukraine’s organisational failure can be seen in Ukraine’s surprise occupation of Russia’s Kursk region in August.
One of Ukraine’s military objectives was to push Russia to redeploy some of its troops in Kursk to fend off advances in Ukraine.
But subsequent territorial losses in east Ukraine are “proof the Kursk operation was a failed gambit”, says Frank Ledwidge, senior lecturer in law and strategy at the University of Portsmouth, and specialist in military activity in Russia and former Soviet states.
Had the elite troops sent to Kursk been sent to Donbas instead, “Ukraine might have had a far better chance of holding the defensive line”, Aliyev adds.
Instead, “Russia has managed to defuse and bring the Kursk situation under control and, contrary to Ukrainian expectations, Russia has not decided to withdraw significant numbers of soldiers from other parts of the front,” says Patrick René Haasler, political analyst of geostrategies in the post-Soviet space for the security collective, the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona.
Breaching the line of defence
The Russian advance is all the more worrying for Ukraine as enemy troops are getting closer and closer to the town of Pokrovsk, around 60 kilometres west of the occupied city of Donetsk.
“For the last two or three months, Pokrovsk seems to have been the main objective for Russians in the region,” says Ledwidge.
Russia said on November 3 its troops had advanced into the village of Vichneve, a dozen kilometres from the town.
If Pokrovsk fell into Russian hands it would make Ukrainian military operations in the Donetsk region especially difficult. The town is a logistics hub, well connected to surrounding cities.
“It’s at a crossroad for trains and roads,” says Ledwidge. From Pokrovsk there are good connections to surrounding cities including Zapo, Dniepr, Kramatorsk and Kupiansk.
The town is also symbolic. It was established as a defensive line in 2014 when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea. Gressel describes it as “a huge fortress, built with very good defences [and] a deep system of bunkers”.
“It’s one of the last significant defensive positions before the Dnipro River,” adds Haasler.
Kamikaze drones, glide bombs
The steady Russian advance towards Pokrovsk in recent weeks has changed the momentum of the conflict in Ukraine.
Instead of trench and positional warfare, “it is looking more and more like a war of movement”, says Aliyev. “Ukraine now can lose up to two villages a day compared to some months ago when it was just one each month.”
The use of glide bombs has helped Russian troops push forward as they can be “employed against large fortified positions or facilities”, Haasler says. They can be launched from a distance meaning “for Ukrainians it’s much harder to do something against the glide bombs than to do something against Russian artillery”, Gressel says.
Kamikaze drones have also played an important role. Russia’s Lancet 3 UAV model had 600 confirmed deployments in May 2024 and 2,500 in October, Haasler says.
The drones are “designed to destroy armoured vehicles and air defence systems. [They] represent a cost-effective method for inflicting significant and financially relevant damage on the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Haasler adds.
But despite recent success, Ledwidge doubts that Russia will be able to maintain a war of movement for long. “The Russians don’t have enough experienced troops for the level of combined warfare that such a manoeuvre war asks for. You need engineering, infantry and armoured vehicle units.”
He believes Russia will fall back on brute force to continue its war of attrition in the hopes of wearing down Ukraine until its defensive positions fall like dominoes.
If Russian troops do capture Pokrovsk, “they will have managed to break an important Ukrainian line and then they will probably fulfil their objective of managing to conquer the Donetsk Oblast”, Gressel says.
From there troops would be well placed to start new offensives towards Zaporizhzhia in the south and then into the north.
Even freezing winter temperatures may do little to slow a Russian advance. “The logistical nightmare of going through winter is much worse in Russia or south Ukraine where you have a very low-density road and railroad network,” Gressel says. “In the Donbas you have a lot of good, well-built roads and railroads.”
Sources from: FRANCE24.COM