Even as Ukraine raids Russia, it is losing another key battle.
This is not Nina Uvarova’s first evacuation. The first time, she fled the advancing Wehrmacht as a two-and-a-half-year-old. Now, aged 84, she is running from Vladimir Putin’s army. The retired teacher has packed her most valuable belongings into five bags, which her son lifts onto the 14.10 evacuation train to Lviv. The emotions of the day bring back memories of her first escape.
“The explosions, the shooting, the hiding in basements, I still remember it all.” The decision to leave agonised her, but Russian artillery landing in Pokrovsk’s southern district left no choice.
The crossroads town of Pokrovsk, population 59,000, has had a front-row seat on the full-scale Russian invasion since 2022. But it is only in the past month that its future has come under serious threat. Russia views its capture as a strategic goal, opening up advances towards the big cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhia. Ukraine’s great hope was that a surprise Kursk offensive would relieve the pressure. If anything, Russia’s advance has accelerated.
Pokrovsk is readying for a nasty, new phase of war. The regional police and local administration have moved out. Two supermarkets have closed, and the rest will probably follow. Locals queue outside banks and pension offices, rushing to do business while they still can. Inside the town, cars race at high speed. On August 19th authorities urged residents to leave. Many are heeding the advice, departing with roof racks full of family heirlooms, fridges, Christmas trees, sofas, chairs, mattresses, with grandmothers squashed on the back seat.
Ukraine’s withdrawal from Avdiivka in February and a bungled rotation in nearby Ocheretyne in May set the stage for the charge on Pokrovsk. Russia is now 10km from the town. At the station platform, the sound of sobbing competes with squeaks from pets squeezed into bags and boxes for the journey west. One question is enough to trigger tears. Yulia Kostynova breaks down as she recalls how a Russian bomb on August 11th destroyed the meat-processing plant were she worked. “Constant stress, explosions, doors and windows that blow open by the shock waves,” she says. “Everything inside you tightens. You hear the rocket, and you wait, and you ask if it will land near you and your home.”
Ukrainian commanders give different reasons for the Russian advance. Some say there aren’t enough shells, with the enemy firing up to ten times as many. Others point to Russian tactics—small infantry assaults, glide bombs, new types of electronic warfare. But exhaustion and manpower issues seem to be at the heart of the collapse. “People aren’t made of steel,” says Colonel Pavlo Fedosenko. Ukrainian troops, outnumbered 4:1, aren’t getting any rest, he says. Some stay on the front lines for 30 or 40 days at a time, cramped in foxholes inches from death. “Dublin,” a fighter attached to the 59th brigade south-east of Pokrovsk, knows soldiers who have been in place for more than two months. Two had strokes. Ukraine’s problems are compounded by “idiotic” orders, he says.
Ukraine’s surprise mini-invasion of Russia provokes mixed feelings. Dublin says early successes lifted morale. But it didn’t last. The hope that Russia might respond by moving troops from Pokrovsk has been supplanted by the realisation that it has not. Ukrainian security sources confirm that while Russia has moved troops from other sections of the eastern front line, it reinforced around Pokrovsk. Ukraine meanwhile redeployed special forces units to Kursk, and is patching up the Pokrovsk front with untested formations. “The Russians have figured things out and aren’t taking the bait,” complains Dublin.
The defenders of Pokrovsk are reluctant to say how long they can hold out. The Russians may take weeks or months to get past outlying towns like Myrnohrad, Selydove, and Ukrainsk, all now haunted by drones, artillery and bomber planes. The advance has slowed since August 19th, says Oleksandr, a drone commander with the 110th brigade, who watches the battlefield from his screens. But the Russians have a habit of pouncing on weak spots to devastating effect, he warns. It seems only a matter of time before Pokrovsk is crushed like Mariupol, Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
What happens then is an open question. Control of Pokrovsk, and a short advance to the administrative borders of the Donetsk region, might be enough for Vladimir Putin to claim a political victory, and start serious negotiations. It might not. Much will depend on whether Ukraine can hold on to the chunk of Russia it now occupies as a bargaining chip in those future talks.
Ms Uvarova says she believes none of the “lies” about negotiations she reads in the newspapers her sons send her every week. And she certainly has no time for a man whose name she’d prefer left unspoken. “It’s disgusting to hear him. Disgusting to see him. Disgusting to read about him.” She sighs, before lugging herself up the three steps onto the train carriage, turning around, and waving Pokrovsk a final goodbye. ■
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Photograph: Inna Varenytsia
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