‘Mad Max-style’: Russian forces roll into battered Ukrainian city

Moscow: Russia says its forces have pushed deeper into the eastern Ukrainian cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, with one video showing Russian soldiers rolling into Pokrovsk on motorbikes and even on the roofs of battered cars and vans.

Moscow says taking Pokrovsk – dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media – would give it a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

“We are losing Pokrovsk,” Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko said on Tuesday.

“The Russians have broken into the city,” he wrote on Telegram, alongside video showing Russian forces under the cover of the fog entering the city piled on an odd assortment of motorcycles, buggies and cars.

Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year, using a pincer movement to attempt to encircle it and threaten supply lines, rather than the deadly frontal assaults it employed to capture the city of Bakhmut in 2023.

Russian war bloggers published the video on Tuesday showing what they said were Russian forces entering Pokrovsk along a road enveloped in fog, in what some Telegram users said looked like scenes from the 1979 Australian post-apocalyptic action film Mad Max.

Screenshots from a video published by Russian war bloggers shows Russians entering Pokrovsk via a foggy road. The location was independently verified by Reuters.Credit: Reuters

Many vehicles, missing doors and windows, were shown driving along a road strewn with debris as soldiers looked on. Some soldiers sat on the roof of a battered vehicle. A drone was seen beside the road.

Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video as Pokrovsk from the road layout, signs, utility tower and trees seen in the video, which matched file and satellite imagery of the area. Reuters was not able to independently verify the date of the footage.

Ukraine’s military said about 300 Russian soldiers were now inside Pokrovsk and that Moscow had intensified efforts to get more troops in over the past few days, using dense fog for cover from drones. It said Ukrainian forces were battling Russian groups in the city.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation in Pokrovsk remained difficult, and the inclement weather was favouring Russia’s attacks, the scale of which he said was increasing.

In a sign of the intensity of the urban battle, Russia said it had taken 256 buildings and that its forces were actively advancing to the north-west and east of Pokrovsk and around the railway station.

Moscow and Kyiv have given different accounts of the battle for Pokrovsk: Moscow has for days said the city was encircled while Kyiv has denied Russia controls the city and said on Monday that it was still able to supply neighbouring Myrnohrad.

Open-source battlefield maps from both sides show Russia has executed a pincer movement around the city and was close to closing it, though Kyiv has counter-attacked around the town of Dobropillia.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, in an interview with The New York Post, said Russia was concentrating about 150,000 troops in a drive to capture Pokrovsk, with mechanised groups and marine brigades part of the push.

While Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video as Pokrovsk, it was unable to independently verify the date the footage was filmed.Credit: Reuters

Russia said its forces had taken full control of the eastern part of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. A Russian commander – who gave his call sign as “Hunter” – said his forces had taken control of an oil depot on the eastern edge of Kupiansk.

In a video statement issued by Russia’s Defence Ministry, he said his forces had also taken control of a series of train stops along the railway to Kupiansk Vuzlovyi, a settlement which is about six kilometres south of the centre of Kupiansk itself.

Russia also said its troops had taken control of the settlement of Novouspenivske in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, right, met with servicemen near Pokrovsk last week.Credit: AP

Ukraine withdrew from some villages including Novouspenivske due to intense attacks involving more than 400 artillery strikes per day, RBC-Ukraine news agency cited a military spokesperson as saying.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Tuesday that the army’s situation has “significantly worsened” in parts of southeastern Zaporizhzhia region amid fierce fighting with Russian forces.

“The situation has significantly worsened in the Oleksandrivka and Huliapole directions, where, using its numerical superiority in personnel and materiel, the enemy advanced in fierce fighting and captured three settlements,” Syrskyi wrote on Telegram.

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Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports from either side due to reporting restrictions and the danger of the war zone.

Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19 per cent of Ukraine – about116,000 square kilometres. Ukrainian maps tracking frontline changes show Russian control at 19.1 per cent of Ukraine, up from 18 per cent nearly three years ago.

Reuters

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