Latest news with #Pokrovsk
Reuters
4 days ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Ukraine's top commander says troops standing firm outside key city
July 18 (Reuters) - Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Friday his forces were standing firm in defending a key city on the eastern front of the three-year war. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised Ukraine's forces in their defence of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in eastern Donetsk region that has weathered months of Russian attempts to capture it in their troops' slow advance westward. Syrskyi said he had presented a report to the president describing the challenges facing Ukrainian troops along the 1,000-km (620-mile) front. "Most attention was focused on the Pokrovsk and Novopavlivka sectors, where our soldiers are courageously containing intense pressure and destroying the Russian aggressor," Syrskyi wrote on the Telegram messaging app. "The enemy is continuing to deploy its tactic of small infantry groups, but has proved powerless on its attempts to seize Pokrovsk. Today, they tried to break through with sabotage groups but were exposed and destroyed by Ukrainian defenders." Zelenskiy, in his account of the commander's report, singled out for praise those defending Pokrovsk, particularly from sabotage groups "trying to advance and enter Ukrainian cities and villages. No such Russian group will have a chance of survival." Syrskyi issued his report at the end of a week of upheaval in the government, now focused on boosting domestic arms production. Zelenskiy appointed a new Prime Minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, and put her predecessor, Denys Shmyhal, at the head of the Defence Ministry. The outgoing Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov, was named chairman of the National Security and Defence Council and told to "intensify" peace talks with Russia. Russia's military has been advancing through Donetsk region, with the Russian Defence Ministry announcing almost daily the capture of villages on the approaches to Pokrovsk. The capture of one such village, Popiv Yar, was announced on Thursday. Ukraine has reported some successes in pushing back Russian troops from the area in recent months. Pokrovsk is a road and rail hub used to supply other frontline towns. Most of Pokrovsk's pre-war population of 60,000 has been evacuated. Ukraine's only mine that produces coking coal - used in its once vast steel industry -- lies idle outside the city. In Kyiv, Ukrainian air defence units repelled Russian drones on Friday evening. Fragments from one intercepted drone fell on a dwelling in an eastern suburb, but no injuries were reported.
BBC News
15-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
'I lost limbs but stayed to help others in Ukraine'
An aid worker who lost an arm and a leg in a Russian drone strike in Ukraine says the war has left thousands of people in need of prosthetic Scott, from Dorset, was helping evacuees from the front line town of Pokrovsk on 30 January when his vehicle was his injuries, he chose to remain in his adopted country and now works for Superhumans - the medical charity that supplied his prosthetic said Ukrainians were being looked after by the "comprehensive state system" but the charity helped people get back to being "whole human beings". Mr Scott, originally from Shaftesbury, said he was "doing really well" since his on BBC Radio Solent's Dorset Breakfast show, he said: "I haven't had a lot of the problems other people have suffered with, particularly mentally."I was offered an evacuation for treatment and I told the team, as long as I'm not taking a bed up from a Ukrainian, I'll stay in Ukraine."It's turned into an incredible decision. I'm very happy to be able to continue to help my adopted country in a very positive way." Superhumans offers free, state-of-the-art prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, rehabilitation and psychological support for adults and children affected by the has supplied 1,600 prosthetics in the last two years but said there were at least 80,000 more people in need of artificial Scott, 28, said he had been "incredibly lucky".He said: "Through Superhumans, I've received a top-notch prosthetic leg, which I'm incredibly grateful to get and I've been slowly learning to use."There is a very comprehensive state system - both medical and rehab - so people are being looked after but it's really places like Superhumans that have the time and the funds to go the extra mile, getting us back to being as whole human beings as possible." You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Telegraph
Inside Ukraine's drone-infested ‘grey zone' where machines are replacing men
The crack of a Ukrainian howitzer splits the air, mingling with the rumble of thunder. Then there is another sharp blast, followed by a sound similar to shredding paper as a Himars missile roars overhead. Unfazed by the orchestra of war, a Ukrainian electrician continues repairing a power cable severed during Russian shelling. Bust as he works, a less familiar sound signals a new threat: the insistent beep of a drone monitor. Even here – in a village on the outskirts of the front line in the eastern city of Pokrovsk – Russian surveillance and strike drones now maintain a constant presence. 'Keep your eyes on the sky and listen,' says Vitaliy Asinenko, a regional chief at DTEK Donetsk Grids, looking up at the lead-grey clouds. Artillery his men are used to; you hope it's aimed elsewhere and take your chances. But if one of the drones circling overhead decides to target the crew, they will have little chance of survival. In his hand, Vitaliy clutches the drone monitor, a £200 device first handed to employees last autumn. Its beeps - now sporadic - will become a single, high-pitched scream if a drone approaches, providing seconds of warning to take cover. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become ever-present more than 10km behind the trenches in both directions, making the front line perilously difficult to reach, or leave. In response, Kyiv's military planners are attempting to reduce the amount of men sent through this lethal 'grey zone' and replace them, where possible, with machines. But DTEK power company's work regularly takes it into the zone. To reach the damaged cables, Vitaliy drives in his armoured Land Cruiser and instructs The Telegraph to be ready to jump out of the door. 'There is a surveillance drone 400m from the car,' he says, as the beeps from the monitor get louder. 'It's following us.' The car turns into a corridor of anti-drone netting that has been recently erected over the 'road of death' into Poksrovsk, the city at the crux of Russia's summer offensive. The webbing is flimsy, albeit strong enough to entangle a light drone before it explodes. By the side of the road, soldiers fix a gap made by a recent artillery strike as one watches the sky with an anti-drone gun. UAVs – be it suicide, bomber or fibre-optic – cause around 70 per cent of all casualties in the war in Ukraine. Troops can no longer be safely transported to their positions inside armoured vehicles, a point one soldier illustrates with images of wrecked MaxxPro MRAPs on his phone. In one of the pictures, a charred torso lies face down in the blackened dust, arms flung into the air either side of its helmet. Evacuation is equally perilous and infantry now spend longer in their dugouts, unwilling to risk any journey unless it is absolutely necessary. In Dobropillia, one of the last towns en route to Pokrovsk, soldiers in uniform relax in cafes beyond the reach of the drones. A recruitment billboard shows the pilot of a first-person-view (FPV) drone standing back-to-back with an Iron Man-like robot, shielded by armour on all sides. 'We will give you the innovations to stop the enemy,' promises the 1st brigade. While soldiers who used to fire stingers or mortars retrain as drone pilots, Kyiv is also pioneering the use of robots that can travel across the ground, delivering supplies, retrieving the dead and, on occasion, carrying out attacks. 'We need to replace soldiers with robots,' Col Pavlo Khazan told his superiors in a 2023 presentation. Ukraine, he argued, could not match Russia's recruitment level, which is now around 8,000 soldiers per month. Nor does it treat its men like 'cans of meat' to be frittered away in suicidal assaults. One general told him he had ideas above his station, but the principle was endorsed by Gen Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army. Today, drones mean that fewer men are needed to hold the line on parts of the front, says Col Khazan, a former unmanned systems commander now serving in the field of electronic warfare. 'My grandfather used to be an artilleryman in the Second World War,' he adds. 'I have deep respect for the artillery and infantry.' But drones are cheaper than artillery and require fewer operators. 'We are well on the way' to an army of machines, he says, speculating on a future where drone swarms – not men – bear the brunt of assaults. On his last deployment, Ivan walked 8km (4.9 miles) to his position. The unit travelled at dawn, hoping to avoid the Russian drone pilots, who he says 'work mostly at night'. The team crept through the flat, tree-lined landscape, around 10 metres apart. Any closer would have made them an easy target; any further apart risks the lives of the wounded. The march was heart-pounding. Not far from his dugout, the 21-year-old machine gunner with the Da Vinci Wolves set up an automatic MK19 grenade launcher. 'We killed two a few days ago,' he says in between drags of a cigarette. The commander spotted a Russian advance and told the unit to raise their drone. Watching on his monitor, Ivan clicked on the soldiers' heads and the gun fired two 40mm grenades. 'Pof,' he says, slapping his skull emphatically. At the beginning of the war, the MK19 had a margin of error of 20 metres but with the drone it is more precise. 'If I tell you [why I'm in this unit], they'll definitely say video games cause violence,' Ivan says with a smile before listing his favourites: Minecraft, Stalker, World of Tanks. His friends have joined the same unit, which specialises in robotic platforms. 'We drank. We signed up. I'm standing here,' he says, gesturing to a dark hangar full of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVSs). He will return to the front next week. Ukraine has stabilised the lines around Pokrovsk since the turn of the year. The Russian army, blocked at the entrance to the city, is attempting a pincer movement. Magyar's Birds, one of Ukraine's elite drone units, has helped to slow their advances by picking off troops and supply lines up to 20km (12.4 miles) behind the front. Earlier this month, Robert 'Magyar' Brovdi, the newly promoted commander of Ukraine's unmanned systems forces, reorganised the reward system for confirmed kills to prioritise Russian drone operators. But Vladimir Putin is expected to throw more resources at the city, which would give Moscow a crucial foothold in its attempt to seize the entire Donetsk region. As the DTEK electricians work in the village near Pokrovsk, a group of residents gather by the roadside. Only 300 remain from a pre-war population 10 times the size. Most lack the funds to flee. Without electricity, the villagers are unable to draw clean water from their well. Food is scarce. On the other side of the road, a graveyard stretches through un-mown grass that rustles in the wind. Ambulance services and undertakers will not come here, so residents are forced to bury the dead themselves. Makeshift wooden crosses mark the more recent graves. 'It's nerve-wracking,' says a tall, thin man in a gilet and black tracksuit. 'There was a time when there weren't any drones, but now they're here every single day.' Only last week, a team of five Russian saboteurs was killed in the village. One of the DTEK employees is up a ladder resting against a pylon when – around 10 minutes after Ukrainian fire – the Russians launch a return volley. Four whoomphs can be heard in succession. 'Guided bombs,' mutters Vitaliy, 'closer and closer'. 'Can you see the mushroom clouds?' he asks the worker up the ladder, who pokes his head up to take a look. 'No,' he replies. Unlike last Thursday, they will not have to abandon the job and take cover. At a nearby substation, the power to the village is turned on again. 'On to the next one,' says Vitaliy, opening the car door to listen as another Himars flies overhead. In Pokrovsk itself, electricity is a distant memory. The city stinks of death and just entering has become a form of Russian roulette, says Vitaliy, who left not long after an Iskander missile landed on his neighbour's home. In a temporary office in the city of Dnipro, Serhiy Dobryak, the mayor of Pokrovsk, admits that the pendulum has started to swing in Moscow's favour, at least when it comes to drones. 'The Russians are mass producing drones now,' he says, his tired eyes behind a pair of rimless spectacles. 'Before let's say October 2024, we had an advantage in drone warfare, but then they caught up with us.' Most concerning is the arrival of the fibre-optic drone, which uses a system that trails a cable back to the operator like a child's toy telephone. Parked outside, the mayor's orange pick-up truck hosts a four-pronged drone jammer, but electronic warfare systems such as this are useless against the new weapon harnessing old-fashioned methods. Specialist Russian units are using them to devastating effect around Pokrovsk. Shiny spool covers the fields across no-man's land, glinting with dew in the morning light. 'We all laughed at them' when they first appeared, Ivan recalls. But he can remember the exact moment he came face to face with a fibre-optic drone: 9.54am on April 30. Unlike radio drones that need a pathway to the sky, fibre-optics can nose around enclosed spaces, similar to a snake tipped with explosives. That morning, the Russian drone exploded in Ivan's dugout while he was still sleeping. But it released no shrapnel. 'I woke up with stars in my eyes and my ears ringing,' he says, picking up a hand grenade in wonder. 'I was wearing one of these on my vest too. I can't believe it didn't explode.' Ukraine's catch-up operation leads to a nondescript house in the Donetsk region, where 'Lug' works at a desk surrounded by shelves that are loaded with cartons of spool. Each is marked by length: 5km, 10k, 20km. It is Lug's job to engineer the fibre-optics used by the Dovbush Hornets, a drone battalion with the 68th brigade, so they can rival their Russian counterparts. He lifts one with the appreciation of an artisan. 'It is a good drone,' he says. Different statistics on drone capabilities fly around. Russia is said to be able to trail at a maximum around 50km of spool behind its drones. For Ukraine, the figure is closer to 30km. Initially, Kyiv bought spool from China but now it manufactures its own, says Lug. With his soldering iron, electronic scales and magnifying glasses, he has spent the past few days trying to improve the detonation mechanism so there is not too much delay as the signal travels down the wire. Training pilots also takes time. Fibre-optic drones have to fly at lower altitudes, slower speeds and in an 'S' shape, so they trail enough spool behind the craft. Sharp turns are not advisable either. The drone's rotors can sever the cable, which is thin enough that it can hardly be felt even on your fingertip. Around 5 per cent of the drones used by the Hornets are currently fibre-optic, Lug says, but he proffers a video of proof for why the figure will rise. 'Good morning motherf----r!' one of the battalion's new fibre-optic pilots shouts, angling his drone towards a Russian soldier in a sleeping bag under a bridge. The Russian desperately kicks the drone away, but it loops back towards him. The camera cuts out and it's good night. If Ukraine is lagging behind in fibre-optics, it has edged ahead with its use of robot systems to retrieve its own casualties, so many of which are now caused by the homespun devices. In spring, Kyiv announced plans to deploy 15,000 UGVs to the front. As things stand, they are relatively rare – a reflection of the cost, novelty and troubles of poor weather. But supporters believe they will have an impact as transformational as the airborne drones before them. In April, the Da Vinci Wolves' robot platforms platoon began using the 'termite' to deliver weapons to the front and then bring back fallen comrades. Ivan gamely hops on the loading bay of the tracked buggy, which can carry up to 300kg. Two colleagues were brought to safety in the past week. 'It doesn't matter too much if you lose the system,' Ivan says. 'And you don't need to waste men as drivers.' Improvements in the communication systems mean that operators can now sit far away from the front line, fiddling with their joysticks in safety. Ara, one operator, says the unit's UGVs have killed around 100 Russians in Kamikaze attacks. In a gloomy corner of the hangar, he gives the nicknames of around a dozen vehicles parked side-by-side: Bandera, Shark, F--- Beaver. When Russian troops stormed a dugout in Pokrovsk, the Da Vinci Wolves sent in a Ratel S, driving the large-wheeled buggy equipped with an anti-tank mine over the rough ground and tipping it head-first through the opening. 'The whole dugout, together with the soldier, goes up in the air,' Ara says. 'God help us, it flew twice as high as the trees.' Before Vitaliy heads back to the DTEK headquarters in Dobropillia, he checks in at the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary. Two small dogs bark manically in the courtyard. The windows of the golden-domed church have been replaced with plywood after they were shattered by drone strikes, the latest only a week ago. In one corner of the garden, a fully-intact quadrocopter lies among the flowers, almost like a miracle. 'We only have God to protect us from the drones,' says the gray-haired wife of the priest, throwing her arms open wide and gazing up at an icon on the front of the steeple. On the 'road of death', a high-pitched whine announces a lone personnel carrier before it can be seen. The vehicle is narrow and boxy. Inside are more men on their way to the front, their hearts, lungs and limbs still so frail in this war of the machines.
Arab News
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Russian shelling kills five in and near eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk
REUTERSTwo people had been killed in Pokrovsk, a key logistics hubKYIV: Russian shelling killed five people on Thursday in and near the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, the regional governor said, a key target under Russian attack for Filashkin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said two people had been killed in Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub, where local authorities have been urging residents to evacuate. Two died in Bylitske, northwest of Pokrovsk, and another in Illinivka, between Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk, another frequent target in Russia's slow westward advance through Donetsk region.
Arab News
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Ukraine struggles to contain Russian summer advances as US aid stalls
KYIV: Russia has made incursions near two towns key to army supply routes in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian military official said on Wednesday, as Moscow seeks a breakthrough in a summer offensive at a time of uncertainty over US support for Kyiv. In recent weeks, Russia has amassed forces and despite heavy losses has advanced in rural areas either side of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, which both sit on crossroads running to the frontline from larger cities in Ukrainian-controlled territory. Russia's advances on the front are matched by an intensification of drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other cities, following signs that Washington's support for Ukraine's war effort is faltering. So far, the efforts by US President Donald Trump have failed to achieve a ceasefire in the full-scale invasion launched by Russia in 2022. One of the aims of the Russian offensive is to occupy the rest of the Donetsk region. Now, they are using small assault groups, light vehicles, and drones to push toward the neighboring region, said Viktor Trehubov, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces. 'There are constant attacks with the intent of breaking through' to the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region at any cost, Trehubov said in written comments to Reuters. Russia now has 111,000 soldiers in the Pokrovsk area, which it has been trying to seize since early last year, Ukraine's top armed forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said last week, describing dozens of battles in the area every day. A decision by Washington to halt some deliveries of various weapons including precision rocket artillery to Kyiv will worsen the situation on the ground for Ukraine's forces, said Jack Watling, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank. 'The loss of these supplies will significantly degrade Ukraine's ability to strike Russian forces beyond 30 km (19 miles) from the front line and therefore allow Russia to improve its logistics,' Watling said. RUSSIAN GAINS Ukrainian blog DeepState, which uses open-source data to map the frontline, said the Russian military in June had seized 556 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, which it said was the largest monthly loss of ground since November. Russian forces, which have numerical superiority, cut the main road linking Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in May, complicating Ukrainian movements and resupply efforts. 'The Russian advance is being contained, but their crossing of the Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka highway is a strategic and logistical setback,' Trehubov said. Heavy Russian losses have prevented Russian advances toward Kostiantynivka via Chasiv Yar, or along the western Pokrovsk front. 'Now they are attempting (to advance) further away from populated areas,' Trehubov said. DeepState also reported that Russian advances in June near Pokrovsk and nearby Novopavlivka accounted for more than half of all Russian gains along the entire frontline in all of Ukraine. Trehubov said Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka remain Ukrainian logistical hubs, despite setbacks and drone activity which make some defensive fortifications less effective. '(Drones) hinder logistics for both sides but don't make it impossible. Drones after all are not invulnerable,' he said.
