Russian and Ukrainian forces are interlocked in desperate battles for control of Ukraine’s eastern towns of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, which Moscow considers a gateway to the remaining unoccupied areas of the Donetsk region.
On Sunday, Valery Gerasimov, Russian chief of staff, told President Vladimir Putin his 2nd and 51st Combined Arms Armies were “advancing along converging axes” and “have completed the encirclement of the enemy” in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.
He claimed some 5,500 Ukrainian troops were surrounded, including elite airborne and marine units.
Russian military reporters contradicted these claims, with one named “Military Informant” telling 621,000 Telegram subscribers, “There is simply no encirclement” as the two claws of Gerasimov’s attempted pincer movement were still “several kilometres” apart.
On Thursday, Oleksandr Syrskii, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, also denied Gerasimov’s claim.
“The statements of Russian propaganda about the alleged ‘blocking’ of the defence forces of Ukraine in Pokrovsk, as well as in Kupiansk, do not correspond to reality,” Syrskii said.
The Russian reporter also thought it “extremely unlikely” that thousands of Ukrainian troops were trapped.
“If earlier urban battles were a classic meat grinder ‘head-to-head’ with battles for each house,” he said, now they are “conducted by small groups of infantry with the support of many drones”.
Geolocated footage showed that isolated Russian groups had entered western and central Pokrovsk on October 23, but they did not appear to control areas within the city, rather to stake out positions and await reinforcements.
