Russia has been advancing in a summer offensive in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, targeting weak spots in the country’s defenses. Ukrainian soldiers have been able to stop Russian forces from taking Pokrovsk since last year, thwarting one of Moscow’s central military goals. The city is heavily damaged and all but a few hundred of the 60,000-strong population has fled. Russia’s forces initially aimed to seize Pokrovsk early last year, but Ukraine slowed the advance this spring by deploying experienced units, laying minefields, and harassing Russian forces with large numbers of drones. Since then, Moscow’s forces have picked up the pace, adapting and expanding the use of drones in their arsenal. Russia has built on the lessons used in pushing Ukrainian forces out of its Kursk region, where it first scaled the use of fibre-optic cable drones that cannot be stopped by electronic jammers. Russia’s territorial gains remain minor, with only 5,000 square kilometers of Ukraine taken since the start of last year, less than 1% of the country’s overall territory.
Russian forces have been advancing on Pokrovsk, Ukraine, resulting in heavy casualties and injuries for the city. Russian soldiers attempted to advance by stealth but were hampered by Ukrainian soldiers using small quadcopter drones. Ukrainian soldiers were given a phone with a location pinned on a map and told to head towards it. The Russians operated in raiding parties of around a half a dozen, often advancing on foot because large vehicles are an easy target for drone pilots. The Ukrainian resistance in and around Pokrovsk has blocked Russia’s ambition of taking the remaining parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, one of President Vladimir Putin’s principal war aims. More than a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost a quarter of those since the start of this year. Ukraine and Russia have not provided official data on their own personnel losses.
