KYIV, Ukraine — A convoy rolls through the dense fog: soldiers on motorbikes, some perched on the roofs of cars missing doors and windows, others atop a battered truck.
Debris covers the muddy, pockmarked road, geolocated by NBC News to southern Pokrovsk — the city where fierce battles are taking place amid Russia’s push to advance deeper into eastern Ukraine.
After more than a year of fighting, there are growing signs that Russia may be about to capture the city, a logistics hub seen as a gateway to the broader region.
Its forces have pierced stretched defensive lines, with Ukraine’s military saying Tuesday that there were “more than 300 Russians in the city.”
“In recent days, Russians have intensified their efforts to enter Pokrovsk on light vehicles through the southern suburbs,” the Ukrainian unit defending the city, the 7th Rapid Response Corps, said in a statement.
“To do this, the enemy used adverse weather conditions, in particular thick fog,” it added. “This reduces the possibilities for our aerial reconnaissance and destruction in open terrain.”
The video shows the Russian troops moving through the thick haze as they pass a road sign marked “Pokrovsk.”
The footage was shared widely on Telegram by Russia’s popular military bloggers, with some comparing its postapocalyptic landscape to scenes from the “Mad Max” action movies.
Pokrovsk is a key Ukrainian transport and supply hub that Russian forces claimed to have encircled earlier this month. It was home to some 60,000 people before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces were advancing in the northwest and east of the city.
Moscow last week urged Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk to surrender and save themselves, claiming they were “trapped.”
Kyiv has repeatedly rejected these claims, with the 7th Rapid Response Corps saying Tuesday that it continued to identify and destroy Russian soldiers in the city.
It previously stated on Facebook that Ukrainian forces continued to maintain their defensive line, with supply routes still operational to the nearby city of Myrnohrad on the eastern front.
Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, pulled back from their positions around five villages on the front line in the southeast because of Russian advances, military spokesman Vladyslav Voloshyn confirmed to NBC News.
If Pokrovsk was to fall, it could become a springboard for Russian forces to threaten nearby strongholds such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk as President Vladimir Putin eyes full control of his neighbor’s industrial heartland known as the Donbas.
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv, and Elmira Aliieva, Larissa Gao and Caroline Radnofsky from London.