Russian troops raised a flag over a mine complex on the northern edge of Novohrodivka on Thursday, marking their farthest advance along the 25-mile Avdiivka-Pokrovsk axis, six months after the ammunition-starved Ukrainian garrison fled the former fortress city.
Now there’s just one main trench between the advancing Russians and Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical hub in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. And it’s not clear the Ukrainians have deployed enough manpower to the Pokrovsk sector to fill the trench with troops.
All that is to say, Pokrovsk—a city with a pre-war population of 60,000—is in big trouble. The meager reinforcements the Ukrainian armed forces have sent to the area may not be able to save it.
What happens if and when Pokrovsk falls is unclear. But it certainly won’t help the Ukrainian war effort as Russia’s wider invasion grinds into its 30th month.
After capturing the ruins of Avdiivka in mid-February, the surviving Russians from a pair of battered field armies stared across what may have seemed like a daunting obstacle lying between them and Pokrovsk: a layer of several trenches threading through the villages between the two cities.
But appearances were deceiving. “Ukrainian troops in the Pokrovsk direction were forced to retreat multiple times, lacking sufficient forces and resources to mount an organized defense,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained.
It’s not that the Ukrainians lost every battle for every section of the trenches. But they lost some. And when one section of a trench fell, the Ukrainian troops in the adjacent sections often had no choice but to fall back—or risk being surrounded.
“The major issue remains the shortage of available manpower and experienced units to provide organized defense and defend those positions,” Frontelligence Insight noted. “No matter how well-constructed or numerous the defenses are, if they are only staffed at 10 to 20 percent of the required capacity, it’s unsurprising that Russian forces are able to overrun them so quickly.”
The Ukrainian military had brigades to spare as the Russian assault on Pokrovsk accelerated in August. But rather than reinforce in the east, the general staff in Kyiv sent some or all of eight brigades across the border into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, initiating a surprise counter-invasion that has captured 400 square miles of the oblast.
The Russians seem to believe there are still around five Ukrainian brigades in reserve. But these too are curiously absent from Pokrovsk—perhaps because Kyiv plans to send them to Kursk, too.
Instead, the Ukrainian defense between Avdiivka and Pokrovsk continues to hinge on the same exhausted brigade that’s been fighting a rearguard action along the axis since February: the elite 47th Mechanized Brigade.
Six months of brutal combat against a bigger Russian force has taken its toll on the elite 47th Mechanized Brigade. The 2,000-person unit rolled into battle in the east in February with all 31 M-1 Abrams tanks that the United States pledged to Ukraine last year.
Today the brigade is down to maybe half of its Abrams, assuming not all of the visibly damaged tanks are repairable. It lost two in August despite protecting the 69-ton, four-person tanks with layers of add-on reactive armor.
There’s still time for Ukraine to save Pokrovsk. “It can be assumed that the enemy will reach the city by mid-September,” according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies, “but they will not be able to capture it.”
“The open terrain, which is unfavorable for an offensive, and potential counterattacks from the Selydove [to the south] and Kostyantynivka [to the north] areas will slow their advance.”
But counterattack with what? There aren’t enough Ukrainian troops in the area to defend—to say nothing of attacking. It’s a truism in military strategy that a successful offensive requires the attacker to have a manpower advantage over the defender.
We don’t know for sure how many Russian troops are around Pokrovsk, but it’s worth noting that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky optimistically predicted the Russians would lose 60,000 people attacking the city.
As far as we know, parts of just five Ukrainian brigades, a pair of smaller regiments and a few separate battalions stand against this veritable horde: at most, 12,000 troops.
Sources:
1. Oryx: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html
2. Frontelligence Insight: https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/what-the-fall-of-pokrovsk-could-mean
3. Center for Defense Strategies: https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-310824
4. Kyiv Post: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/38063
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