Pokrovsk's strategic location in the east, 30 miles (48 km) from the front, made it a wartime Ukrainian boom city and a haven for a while. However, it was prior to the summer of 2024, when a swift Russian offensive swallowed the industrial center in a devastating struggle that is only now coming to a close.
The 18-month battle for Pokrovsk epitomises the current situation of the Ukraine war: an attritional combat in which modest Russian victories have been made at incredible human cost. Though it proves Russia cannot simply seize metropolitan centers, the battle has also exhausted Ukraine, and effects are surfacing elsewhere.

Pokrovsk is no longer even tactically important due to the extent of the devastation. Its population is decimated, its economy ruined and supply channels are re-routed; instead it has become a grisly signpost as peace discussions commence.
According to Nick Reynolds, a land warfare analyst at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, "there are fairly strong military arguments for Ukraine giving up ground." However, strategically speaking, Ukraine understands that ceding territory won't always end the conflict. Giving up land would mean waging the same wars on different terrain.”
An industrial city, with a prewar population of 60,000 and five-storey communist residential towers in its core, Pokrovsk was already noteworthy before the Russian invasion.

Following Russia's full-scale attack in February 2022, many quickly left the city. But while the invaders surged through the south and eastern edge of Ukraine, the prewar lines held at Avdiivka 30 miles south-east. As the frontlines steadied elsewhere, Pokrovsk’s location rendered it tactically crucial.
Its roadways served as the main route from the central city of Dnipro to Kramatorsk and Ukraine's fortress belt in Donetsk province, transporting troops and supplies ahead and transporting casualties back at night. Its rail station became a distribution center for the area.
By the summer of 2022, Pokrovsk's population had returned to prewar levels, making it a bustling base in the rear that even permitted a 7 p.m. curfew.

“The city gained a boost from all the people that were arriving,” said Oleksandr Nesterenko, a public activist from Pokrovsk. An apartment that could have cost $100 a month to rent before the conflict “at the peak in 2023 cost anywhere from $350 to $600”, he claimed, with businesses selling military gear cropping up “seemingly every 3 metres”.
That began to change in August 2023. A few weeks prior, there had been a warning that frontline hotels were being targeted by the Russians. About 40 minutes apart, two Iskander missiles struck an apartment building close to the Druzhba on August 8. The second missile appeared to be an attempt to kill or maim persons who were responding to the first strike. There were seven fatalities.

For journalists, Pokrovsk became a location to pass through. Its economy has begun to transform with a number of women taking on traditionally male vocations laboring in the coalmines. However, a significant shift was brought about by Avdiivka's collapse in February 2024, which was partially brought on by the US Congress suspending military assistance.
A reasonably quick Russian advance proceeded in the next six months, crossing lightly maintained rear lines, and the invaders came within 7 miles of the south of the city by August. The evacuation of civilians was ordered. When the Guardian arrived in August 2024, store signs were being removed and library books were being packed up. The majority of locals eventually gave up on their lives and houses.

Pokrovsk was supposed to fall in weeks, but did not. Some pressure on the sector was lifted by Ukraine’s surprise foray into Russia, also in summer 2024, while the defenders became more organised. Russia’s forces, unable to capture the city outright, launched instead what turned out to be a slow semi-encirclement – finally outnumbering the defenders eight to one, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said last month.
Russian forces focused hard on detecting and eliminating Ukrainian FPV (first-person view) drone crews with its Rubicon drone units, attaining an aerial dominance in the summer, and targeted the last supply routes covered by anti-drone netting to the north. Rotating soldiers and evacuating injured grew increasingly risky, leaving defenders tired. The defensive position was further undermined by a lack of Ukrainian artillery.Nesterenko abandoned his flat in Pokrovsk in the autumn of 2024, but returned, despite the mounting risks, for a few months thereafter to help others in the city. His last visit was in March this year. The least perilous way into Pokrovsk was to walk - a car being too visible a target for an FPV drone; the sound of explosions, he noted, was persistent.

“At that time there was still one shop working, a general store, and it had a Starlink internet and a generator, so you could still pay by card,” he stated. “No young people were left. When an explosion was imminent, none of the patrons, who were all 50 years of age or older, would squirm or quiver.

The coking coalmine's tunnels were purposefully collapsed, and it closed in January. Because it is not actively being maintained the mine has flooded. The last shop shut in August. About 1,200 inhabitants are thought to live in Pokrovsk and 900 in nearby Myrnohrad, primarily waiting for the Russians, while Nesterenko stated the city was “a complete ruin. Gas, water, power, and heating are all absent.
Russian forces began to infiltrate in ones, twos and small groups, to escape drone attack, from October, increasingly taking advantage of wet or foggy autumn weather to hide from drones. Although a stunning helicopter strike by Ukrainian special forces at the end of October cleared an escape route, their goal was to close off the city.

Meanwhile the Russian infiltrators keep coming: on foot, on motorbike, even in pickup trucks. On November 10, a larger but similarly erratic group known as the "Mad Max convoy" emerged from the fog in a video. Their purpose was to accumulate in Pokrovsk, before identifying and attacking Ukrainian strongholds.
In October, the Russians sustained 25,000 losses, dead and wounded, largely around Pokrovsk, according to Zelenskyy. In January, the total was 15,000, according to another Ukrainian estimate. That suggests taking the rest of Donetsk, the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which Vladimir Putin is demanding in the present peace discussions, would be more bloody.

Meanwhile, issues are developing elsewhere, possibly as a result of Ukraine's obstinate 15-month defense: its front is collapsing close to Huliaipole, 60 miles to the southwest, with 6 miles lost in November.
Reynolds stated, "Ukraine is in a very difficult position, even though it is a large country and only losing territory slowly." “Meanwhile, even if Russia continues to advance, it is not clear to what degree its civilians will in future put up with the numbers being recruited and killed.”