Pokrovsk Is Not Strategic. Ukraine Withdrawal Offers Limited Impact, Some Benefit

For well over a year, Ukrainian forces have tenaciously defended Pokrovsk and, in the process, forced Russia to pay a terrible price in casualties and weaponry. Analysts believe that the Kremlin units attempting to take it are severely degraded in terms of their combat capabilities. 

Withdrawal now for the Ukrainians, after having extracted such a cost from the Russians, offers almost now operational impact and some benefits - such as improved logistics - especially as they have significant defenses on higher ground to the north and west. The biggest threat for Ukraine is a propaganda victory for Putin which he would try to use to bolster his inevitable victory argument. But absent any accession to Trump's demand for movement on a ceasefire, even that impact seems limited. JL

David Stern and colleagues report in the Washington Post:

Ukraine has held out against Russia’s advance toward Pokrovsk for nearly two years.  Analysts say that leaving Pokrovsk provides new advantages for Ukrainian troops as they establish new footholds nearby ahead of winter. Abandoning the salient would shorten Ukrainian front lines and improve logistics. “After fighting on the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad axis, losing the cities now would have limited effect on the broader operational picture. A Ukrainian retreat from the area doesn’t mean Russia would automatically gain momentum. “In the end Pokrovsk is just another sector. What matters most is Ukraine preserving its forces and avoiding encirclement.”

Ukrainian forces are still battling desperately to maintain their foothold in the besieged eastern city of Pokrovsk, even as debate mounts over whether they should tactically retreat — a move that could save lives but also deliver a propaganda victory to Russia.

 

Ukraine has held out against Russia’s advance toward Pokrovsk for nearly two years and is more reluctant than ever to cede territory to Moscow as Russian President Vladimir Putin urges the White House to pressure Kyiv into a deal to give up the entire Donetsk region.

Leaving Pokrovsk — even to reinforce better positions nearby — could strengthen Russian morale and be used to influence an unpredictable White House that Kyiv is unable to hold Moscow back from its maximalist goals. But staying in the city as street fights unfold carries its own major risks of heavy casualties for Ukrainian troops and equipment, a danger for a country already vastly outnumbered and facing a major personnel shortage.

Putin would use the loss of Pokrovsk to “sway” President Donald Trump of “the inevitability of victory and the futility of aiding Ukraine,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst with Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian nonprofit organization.

 

Kyiv faces “a very difficult dilemma to navigate,” he said. As the military situation worsens in Pokrovsk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top officials needed “to think about troop preservation.” But, also, “politically, it’s difficult to withdraw from sovereign territories knowing that it might be diplomatic boost for Russia.”

Russian control of Pokrovsk could also open a path to Russian advances toward Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions to the west and southwest, which are less well defended. The dilemma is complicated by the painful history of other eastern cities Russia has seized, including Bakhmut in 2023 and Avdiivka in 2024, where Ukraine dug in and then suffered enormous losses as Russia advanced. Russia’s own massive losses were easier for Moscow to swallow, because of its far larger population that has made sourcing frontline troops much easier. Ukraine’s military faced criticism internally and abroad for not withdrawing sooner to save the lives of its soldiers.

If Pokrovsk falls, it will be the largest city to be taken by Russia since Bakhmut.

Russia wants “to occupy as much territory as possible in the east and south of Ukraine” to increase pressure to cancel economic sanctions against Russia and exert “political pressure on negotiations,” said Andrii Ryzhenko, a strategic expert at Sonata, a U.S. defense logistics and training company. “That’s why they are so active in the Pokrovsk region.”

But decisions must be made quickly, military analysts say, as the window could be quickly closing for Ukrainian troops to get out of Pokrovsk and the smaller nearby city of Myrnohrad.

Kremlin forces “appear to be operating with increasing comfort within Pokrovsk” and have “advanced in southern Myrnohrad,” the D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its daily digest of the conflict in Ukraine on Monday.

 

Ukraine acknowledges that the fight is difficult inside the city, with Zelensky announcing last week that Russian forces outnumber Ukrainians 8 to 1. But he insists Russian reports that it has encircled thousands of troops are false and that Moscow had “no significant successes in the last days,” even while Pokrovsk was the “hottest front,” making up close to a third of all frontline activity. Five Ukrainian brigades and one regiment were involved in the fighting, he said.

“So, you understand it’s not easy for our guys,” Zelensky said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decorates servicemen near the frontline city of Pokrovsk on Tuesday. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP)

Analysts say that leaving Pokrovsk could provide new advantages for Ukrainian troops if they can establish new footholds nearby ahead of winter. Abandoning the salient would shorten Ukrainian front lines and improve logistics, said Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst with the Finnish Black Bird Group that analyzes the war.

“After a year of fighting on the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad axis, losing the cities now would have limited effect on the broader operational picture. A Ukrainian retreat from the area doesn’t mean Russia would automatically gain momentum which they could capitalize on immediately,” he wrote on X, noting that Ukraine’s limited personnel was more important than holding territory at all costs. “At this stage Ukrainian forces should be withdrawing rather than trying to stay in a collapsing pocket,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on the Ukrainian conflict and recently visited troops near Pokrovsk.

The situation was looking “increasingly precarious,” he said and “nobody is sure about how many troops actually remain.” Whatever the number, “at this stage of the war it is exceedingly difficult to extract forces under fire control of enemy drones.”

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, GUR, announced a number of operations to relieve pressure on troops and allow resupply over the past few days.

It is “unclear how much longer Ukrainian defenders can hold out,” Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said. “The pocket could collapse in the near future unless Ukraine manages to stabilize the front line and clear the city of Russian forces.”

Two major questions confront Kyiv’s military, Gady said: whether Ukrainian forces can carry out a tactical withdrawal and “extract its remaining forces without heavy losses,” and whether they can “establish strong new defensive positions north of the city to stabilize the front.”

Because of Russian air power, Ukrainian troops “may have to wait for heavy rains and strong winds to limit Russian drone operations” in the hope of “reducing the risk of being targeted during the maneuver,” he said.

A pilot assembles a bomber drone for a nighttime strike mission against Russian forces in Pokrovsk on Sunday. (Maria Senovilla/EPA/Shutterstock)

According to the ISW on Tuesday, Russia’s campaign against Pokrovsk has been characterized by steady attacks on Ukraine’s drone forces to deny it air cover allowing Moscow’s forces to slowly infiltrate the city. “Russian gains on the Pokrovsk sector have been in large part enabled by the Russian targeting of Ukrainian drone capabilities,” it wrote in Tuesday’s battlefield report.

The loss of Pokrovsk would be a blow for Kyiv, but it will not be a game changer.

“Taking Pokrovsk will help Russian forces expand one of the main axis of advance seeking to envelop the main remaining cities in Donetsk but it won’t lead to a collapse of the overall defense,” Kofman said. “Hence its fall and the overall impact shouldn’t be overstated.”

“In the end Pokrovsk is just another sector,” he said. “What matters most is Ukraine preserving its forces and avoiding an encirclement there.”