Russia Fast Closes on Key Ukrainian City Despite Kursk Setback

CNN
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Russia is “rapidly approaching” a key military hub in eastern Ukraine, a local official said, as Moscow continues its advance despite surprise gains by Kyiv in the Kursk region of its enemies.

Although Pokrovsk is not a large city — it had about 60,000 residents before the war and many have left since the full-scale invasion began — it is a major hub for the Ukrainian military thanks to easy access to Kostyantynivka, another military hub.

Ukrainian forces are using the road linking the two countries to resupply the front lines and evacuate casualties towards Dnipro.

Serhiy Dobriak, head of the military administration of Pokrovsk, urged residents there to evacuate without delay.

“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said in a post on Telegram on Thursday.

His warning is evidence that Moscow has not backed down from its assault on other parts of Ukraine, despite Kyiv’s successful cross-border incursion over the past week, a major development after two and a half years of open conflict.

Ukraine says it has seized more than 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of Russian territory since launching its surprise offensive, forcing tens of thousands of Russians to leave their homes.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that Ukraine had used Western missiles for the first time to destroy a bridge over the Seim River in the Kursk region, adding that the strike killed volunteers trying to evacuate civilians.

The HIMARS high-mobility artillery rocket system has been perhaps the most revered and feared piece of weaponry in the Ukraine fighting and since its arrival has helped Ukraine reclaim large swaths of territory from Russia.

Ukraine has used U.S. weapons and vehicles as part of its incursion into Russian territory, according to U.S. officials, even as the Biden administration has placed limits on the use of U.S. weapons in Russia.

Ukrainian officials said on Friday that their army, which has already penetrated 35 kilometers (22 miles) into Russian territory, was still advancing “in some areas by one to three kilometers.”

Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from fighting on the front lines in occupied Ukraine in order to address the territorial loss in the Kursk region.

But according to Dobriak, the enemy is “very close” to Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s main logistical and military hub that has become the focus of the Russian offensive in the Donetsk region.

“They are just over 10 kilometres (about 6.2 miles) from the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said, adding that the situation was “getting worse.”

For months, Russia has been expanding Ukrainian defenses across the entire front line, trying to seize as much territory as possible before new Ukrainian recruits and new batches of fighters join it. Western weapons Starting to reach the battlefield.

Russia’s gains have been largely gradual — the front line has barely moved in the past few months — but the recent advance toward Pokrovsk has alarmed Ukraine and its allies.

Capturing the city would bring Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of capturing all of eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Kostyantynivka is the southern part of a belt of four Ukrainian cities – Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – that form the backbone of Ukraine’s defences in the area, so any advance by Russian forces towards the city is significant.

The Ukrainian incursion into Russia has not led to a decrease in Moscow’s attacks in the Donetsk region, Serhiy Tsyutsky, an officer of Ukraine’s 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, told Ukraine’s national broadcaster Sospilny on Friday.

He added that the Russian attempts to advance do not stop “for a single minute”, and that “the battles continue around the clock.”

“Given the events in the Kursk region, they (Russian forces) are trying to do everything in order to achieve success at least somewhere,” he said.

Ukrainian army commander Oleksandr Syrskyi admitted on Friday that “fierce fighting” was taking place in the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said on Thursday that Russian forces were “maintaining a relatively high offensive tempo” in Donetsk, “suggesting that the Russian military leadership continues to prioritize advances in eastern Ukraine even as Ukraine presses Russian forces inside” the Kursk region.

Additional reporting by CNN’s Olga Voitovich in Kiev and Edward Sekeris in Hong Kong.