Putin’s forces are bypassing a key stronghold in eastern Ukraine that they have fought for months to capture and are focusing instead on cutting supply lines to it, a Ukrainian official has said.
Russian troops are going around the vital logistics hub of Pokrovsk, where a steadfast Ukrainian defense has kept them at bay, and are taking aim at a highway that leads from there to the central Ukraine city of Dnipro, Maj. Viktor Trehubov, a local Ukrainian army spokesperson, said.
That route is crucial for supplies feeding Ukrainian forces in the entire region. Cutting the highway traffic would also severely weaken Pokrovsk.
“So far, they have not achieved their goal and (Ukrainian forces) are working to ensure that they do not achieve it in the future — just as they have not been successful in other attempts to bypass the city,” Trehubov said in a WhatsApp message.
Ukraine’s army is under severe strain along parts of the approximately 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, especially in the eastern Donetsk region where Pokrovsk is located.
A map of Pokrovsk:
After almost three years of war, Ukrainian units are depleted and are outnumbered by Russian forces. Though its battlefield progress has been slow and costly, momentum in the war is in Russia’s favor and its onslaught has gradually swallowed up towns and villages.
In his daily video address to the nation late Sunday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fighting around Pokrovsk was “the most intense” in recent days.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is pressing his advantage ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House next week. Trump says he wants to bring a swift end to the war, though he hasn’t publicized details of his plans.
In 2022, Moscow illegally annexed the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, which make up the economically important Donbas industrial area, together with the southeastern provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. But Russian forces don’t fully control any of them.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Monday that two North Korean soldiers who were captured by Ukrainian forces while fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region haven’t expressed a desire to seek asylum in South Korea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he’s willing to hand over the soldiers to North Korea if the country’s authoritarian leader, Kim Jong Un, arranges for an exchange with Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia.
Zelenskyy said one of the North Korean soldiers wishes to stay in Ukraine while the other wants to return to his country, which was consistent with interview videos released by his government.
“If Kim Jong Un even remembers these citizens of his and is capable of organizing an exchange for our warriors being held in Russia, we are ready to transfer such soldiers. Undoubtedly there will be more POWs from North Korea,” Zelenskyy said in an address late Sunday. He said in a separate posting on the social media platform X that “there may be other options” for North Korean prisoners who don’t wish to go back.
