Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:
Pokrovsk is not strategically important, and if the Ukrainians can extract high casualties on the Russians with one-eight of the soldiers, that is a good thing! The Battle has been going on since late July 2024, making it one of the longest in modern history. Putin desperately wanted to take it, so sent waves of soldiers to attack. They might keep doing so in coming weeks, though it will gain them nothing but more casualties. The Ukrainian offensive into Kursk kept Pokrovsk from falling for almost 500 days and caused tens of thousands of extra Russian losses, iso should be judged a great success. The whole course of the battle shows Ukraine has been correct in not drafting all its young men. The Ukrainians should extract the losses they can and protect their existing forces. Ukraine should be happy to sell Russia another area on the map at the same cost.
There is a chance that the Battle of Pokrovsk might be nearing its end. Its been going on since late July 2024, making it one of the longest battles in modern history—more than 450 days long at this point. Its also showed some important evolutions in the fighting. Pokrovsk was never a strategic city (despite the analytical community last summer saying that over and over again that it was, when they thought it was going to fall to the Russians then). It was a small city that had been turned mostly into a burnt out shell, but Putin has desperately wanted to take it, so has sent waves and waves of soldiers to attack the town. They might do so in the coming days and weeks, though it will gain them nothing but casualties. Indeed, the whole course of the battle shows how Ukraine has been correct in not drafting all its young men and sending them to the front (even though the narrative about that has been going on longer than the fall of Pokrovsk).
Finally, the Chinese government has basically stared down the Trump administration and directly challenged Trump’s “sanctions” on Russian oil companies. And Trump, of course, blinked when it came time to discuss these sanctions with the Chinese. We can guess where this is heading.
The Battle Of Pokrovsk Might Be Ending
In late July 2024, we were, for the first time but definitely not the last, told that the Russians were about to seize the “strategic” city of Pokrovsk, which would then open up much of central Ukraine for Russian advances and represent a devastating blow against Ukrainian logistics. The Russians were just about 10 miles from Pokrovsk and the analytical community was sure it would not be long until it fell to Putin’s forces.
It was a narrative that was widely repeated in the coming weeks by the Financial Times, Washington Post, Economist, etc, all of whom stressed that that Pokrovsk was doomed and that this would be a crucial loss for the Ukrainians. There were so many weird parts of this narrative. It was based on the idea that Pokrovsk was strategic (it was not then and is not now). The imminent fall of Pokrovsk was also used to say that the Ukrainian offensive into Kursk had failed (actually if that offensive kept Pokrovsk from falling for almost 500 days and caused tens of thousands of extra Russian losses, it should be judged a great success). Finally, it was based on a total misreading of what we were seeing on the battlefield. This was the idea that the Russians could move quickly and decisively in a few weeks and surround and take the town, when they clearly lacked the capabilities to do that. I wrote a number of pieces about this strange analysis at the time as it seemed so entirely wrong-headed.
Weekend Update #95: The Discussion of Kursk Versus Pokrovsk Makes Little Strategic Sense
Read full story
Weekend Update #96: The Abuse of the Word “Strategic”
Read full story What the analytical community seemed to not understand was that advancing was extremely difficult and getting more so, that the Russians had no capacity to move quickly, and that Pokrovsk was not in imminent danger. To move ten miles over well defended territory is a big ask, particularly of the Russian army.
And what has happened? Well in the more than 15 months since the reporting started dooming, the Russians have sacrificed huge numbers of soldiers to creep up at the town—at a pace it must be said that is much slower than a snail’s pace. Here was the map on August 1, 2024—the Russian front line was 16 kilometres (just over 10 miles) from Pokrovsk.
And here it is today, 460 days later, with the Russians finally closing in on taking the town.
It would have shamed a snail to move at the pace that the Russian Army has moved at during this time. I checked and an average snail at a normal pace can move about 3 inches a minute—about 15 feet or 5 metres an hour. There are some legendarily fast snails that have moved at 10 feet a minute, but I’m more than happy to use the speed of a normal, even slightly unathletic snail. Such a mediocre snail starting at the Russian front line on August 1, 2024, would have moved more than 31 miles (47 kilometres) between then and now.
The Russian Army could only dream of moving as fast as a snail.
What happened, of course, is that defensive firepower mostly but not exclusively exemplified by the massive explosion in numbers of UAVs over the battlefield, have made moving forward an extreme a bloody business. Call it a kill zone, a dark zone, a vehicle free zone, what you will, but moving forward can only be done in small increments, logistics and support cannot be concentrated near the front, and exploitations are impossible.
As such Pokrovsk has turned into a charnel house of Russian soldiers and equipment, while losing whatever value it had (it was never strategic) to the Ukrainians. Now the city is a ruined shell of burnt out buildings and death. The number of casualties is probably well over 100,000. Ukrainian high command, which has been accurate much of the time, estimates that between the end of August 2025 and mid October, Russian casualties in attacking Pokrovsk numbered approximately 14,000 killed and wounded. And this is only one-tenth of the time that the battle has been going on.
What has happened now is that the city has been surrounded on three sides, and that seems to be giving mass Russian drone operations greater and greater ability to control Ukrainian movement in the town. That is why it might now finally fall. Here is a clear Institute For The Study Of War map of the situation.
The Ukrainians should not sacrifice lots of soldiers to try and hold a meaningless shell which is being surrounded by Russian drones on three sides. They should extract the losses they can and protect their existing forces. If it means that the battle is winding down, so be it. As Benjamin Franklin reportedly said when hearing about British losses to take Bunker Hill in 1775—Ukraine should be happy to sell Russia another area on the map at the same cost.
Pokrovsk Proves that Ukraine Needs To Be Careful Not To Throw All of Its Young People Into The Front-Line Fight.
Another narrative that has been going on for far longer than the “Strategic Pokrovsk is about to fall” is, “Ukraine has a manpower crisis and will fall to Russia unless it drafts all of its young people”. This narrative of impending doom is now two years old (at least) It first started taking off in late 2023. Then we were told by western analysts who look at war like some front-line boardgame, that Ukraine needed to draft everyone that they could and send them to the front, or the country was doomed.
The Economist wrote a major story on Ukraine’s ongoing manpower crisis on December 17, 2023. And The Washington Post went one step further and said at the same time that Ukraine’s manpower crisis was sign that faith in the Ukrainian government was collapsing as “interviews with draft-age Ukrainians suggest that many are less than eager to fight for a military and national government that is viewed as rife with corruption and incompetence.”
And here we are two years later, and Ukraine has not collapsed, and it has not drafted all members of society, and indeed is even allowing some young people to travel (which makes MAGA-loves incandescent as they seem to love police states and government control). And yet, the same narratives have been repeated endlessly for the last two years, and have even recently been conflated with the possible Russian seizure of Pokrovsk.
Here is a quote from an Atlantic Council piece just released on the subject.
As the Russian army closes in on the strategically crucial city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s growing manpower shortages are becoming more and more apparent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated this week that Ukrainian troops on the Pokrovsk front are currently outnumbered eight to one by Russian forces, highlighting the scale of the problem. After three and a half years of heroic and exceptionally bloody resistance, the fear is that Ukraine may now be approaching the point when the country no longer has enough fighters to effectively defend the full length of the front lines in Europe’s largest war since World War II.
Its hard to say how weird this argument is. Pokrovsk is not strategically important, and if the Ukrainians can extract high casualties on the Russians with one-eight of the soldiers, that is a good thing! Had the Ukrainians packed the area and lost thousands more of their own soldiers for the territory, that would have been a disaster. Thankfully they did not.
The battle of Pokrovsk in reality shows the opposite from what the analytical community has been arguing for two years. Ukraine should not have sent masses more of its young soldiers into the charnel house that is the front. It needed to learn to fight with smaller numbers of soldiers—indeed it should be trying to hold the front-line with a small a number of forces as possible. If the Russians want to slaughter their people for yards of dirt they can.
Imagine if Ukraine had drafted all their young people two years ago and sent them to the front? Russian advances might have moved even slower (think sub-sub-snail’s pace) but Ukrainian losses would have been much higher. And the Ukrainians would have played that card, wasted a valuable cohort of young people upon whom the country’s future depends, while almost certainly hurting domestic production which is one of Ukraine’s great success. I stand by this piece even more, though it has driven some people nuts, and believe that the results of the Battle of Pokrovsk validates its basic premise.
The Harping On Ukrainian Manpower Shows How Little Analysts Understand War
Read full story To end this section, I will quote General Zaluzhny back in late 2023, when the narrative of Ukraine facing a manpower crisis first emerged. Zaluzhny acknowledged Russia’s long-term manpower advantage to The Economist, calling it “a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life.” For Ukraine, however, the “most expensive thing we have is our people.”
And as such Ukraine has to learn how to preserve its people. Its not Russia and should not fight as such.
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