Offensive on Pokrovsk: an expert explains how the Russians plan to attack the city

The Russian occupying army seeks to avoid direct assaults on the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region.

This was stated by military analyst Oleksii Hetman during a broadcast on the FREEDОМ channel.

"They want to avoid direct assaults on Pokrovsk because they see that the city is quite well-fortified, but the radius of fortifications cannot be very large from the city... If you simply increase the distance from the city by 5 km, then calculate how much the defense line should expand. It’s simply not advantageous to build such fortifications, so the radius isn’t very large, starting from the outskirts of the city. They approached Pokrovsk from the east and got stuck there last summer, and they haven't advanced further. The distance of 5-7 km remains from the eastern direction. Therefore, they decided to bypass Pokrovsk from the flanks, from the north and south," he said.

The military analyst adds that the Russians are trying to reach the "Pokrovsk — Pavlohrad" highway to physically control it.

"They want to cut off the "Pokrovsk — Kostiantynivka" highway to weaken our logistics capabilities of supplying everything needed to our garrison defending Pokrovsk," he said.

Hetman reminds that there is still a civilian population in the city, mostly elderly people, and they also need supplies like water, food, medicine, etc.

"These logistics routes are important not only for bringing ammunition, to put it simply, but also for delivering everything necessary for the civilian population, so we need to worry about that as well. And the Russians want to deprive us of that opportunity by cutting off this road, so as not to get involved in street fighting in Pokrovsk. The Russians know very well from the example of Kurakhove how difficult it is to conduct combat operations in a city, and how prolonged that can be," the military analyst said.

Oleksii Hetman notes that the occupiers aim to seize as much Ukrainian territory as possible before potential negotiations begin.

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