KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian troops have launched helicopter raids and counteroffensives to try and ease the pressure on a key eastern city, as the Kremlin seeks a crucial battlefield victory with the U.S. push for peace shelved.
Street battles were being fought in Pokrovsk, a transport and supply hub whose capture could serve as a springboard for the Russian military to threaten bigger nearby cities. It would also hand Vladimir Putin new leverage at a delicate diplomatic moment, with the Russian leader set on capturing the entirety of the broader Donetsk region.
Putin’s forces have been battling to take Pokrovsk for more than a year, but now appear on the verge of a breakthrough with the front lines in the city increasingly blurred.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Ukrainian troops should surrender to save themselves, claiming they were “trapped” by Russian forces in the city, which was once home to some 60,000 people but is now largely deserted and destroyed.
It said that Russian troops were advancing further northward into Pokrovsk, blocking multiple Ukrainian attempts to break out of encirclement.
Ukraine has rejected the idea that its troops were encircled. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops Tuesday in nearby Dobropillia, where Ukrainian forces are staging a counteroffensive to try and draw Russia’s focus.
NBC News could not independently verify the battlefield accounts from either side.
However, Ukrainian military officials and soldiers on the ground have conceded that the situation in Pokrovsk is increasingly challenging.
“The situation is difficult,” Sgt. Liana Kononchuk of the Ukrainian unit operating in Pokrovsk, told NBC News via WhatsApp this week. “We are trying to control it. But, unfortunately, it has only been getting worse lately,” the 31-year-old said.
“As of now there is no permanent line of defense as such,” she said. “The enemy seeps northwards by one, two, three units at a time, thereby trying to erode the frontline,” Kononchuk added.
Her comments match the assessment of the Ukrainian open-source mapping project Deep State. Its latest map showed that Russian forces had pushed further into the city from the south but that most of the area remained a contested gray zone controlled by neither side.
Ukraine has deployed additional resources in a bid to hold back the Russian assault, including a special forces operation using U.S.-made Black Hawk helicopters to restore supply routes, according to a spokesperson for the 7th Rapid Response Corps that is leading the defensive effort.
Kononchuk hopes that these reinforcements will stabilize the situation. “The logistics situation is now very complicated. Rotating positions is hard, and evacuating the wounded is even harder,” she said.
The Ukrainian commander overseeing defense of the city, Col. Yevhen Lasiichuk, said via WhatsApp on Monday that Moscow’s claims of an encirclement were false and part of Russia’s propaganda “game.”
Lasiichuk said that there were between 200 and 300 Russian soldiers inside the city.
“They are trying to push through the town to block key logistic points,” he added.
Lasiichuk stressed that, although complicated, Ukraine was still able to reach its troops in Pokrovsk.
“Our Defense Forces units have recently carried out airborne landings,” he said. “This certainly does not look like an encirclement.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that its troops had repelled a Ukrainian special forces landing and killed all 11 soldiers who arrived by helicopter.
Influential Russian military bloggers have reported the heavy use of drones and smaller mobile units to disrupt Ukrainian defenses.
While the exact situation on the ground remained unclear, military analysts said that losing Pokrovsk would be a bitter blow for Ukraine as it pushes for greater U.S. support.
“The loss of Pokrovsk would make Ukrainian logistics on this front complicated, increase the risk of losing or retreating from nearby positions, and require a restructuring of the defensive lines,” Viktor Kevliuk, a retired Ukrainian colonel now working for the Kyiv-based Center for Defense Strategies, said in an interview.
Pokrovsk would be Russia’s most important territorial gain since it took the eastern city of Avdiivka in early 2024. Its capture could cause a “domino effect,” but would still be a limited strategic gain unlikely to shift the overall balance of the war, Kevliuk said.
Other experts said it could bolster Putin’s bargaining hand after Trump called off a planned summit and imposed new sanctions on Russia last month.
“Moscow could also try to use any battlefield gains to pressure Ukraine at the negotiating table and persuade Trump to accept Russia’s terms,” Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an interview.
“Ukraine is in a difficult position. Politically, it is hard to withdraw from territory — especially when the enemy is trying to turn local military successes into broader strategic and diplomatic victories,” said Bielieskov, who is also a senior analyst at Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization.
But, he said, in practical terms keeping hold of the area was now “extremely challenging.”
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv, and Elmira Aliieva from London.