Russia’s military command has been trying for more than a year to encircle and capture the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
The Pokrovsk axis remains the hottest part of the front, but Russian assaults there have recently decreased, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a post on Facebook.
According to the General Staff, Russian forces carried out 81 attacks on November 12 in the Pokrovsk direction, compared with 51 attacks on November 13. Fighting took place near Sukhetske, Shakhove, Belitske, Rodinskoye, Dorozhne, Krasny Lyman, Pokrovsk, Mirnograd, Kotline, Udachnoye, Filiya and other settlements.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that as of October 2025 Russia had massed about 170,000 troops near Pokrovsk in a bid to encircle and seize the city.
Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russian units are infiltrating Pokrovsk in small infantry groups and attempting to cut Ukrainian logistics. Heavy fighting is ongoing. The General Staff said troops of the 1st Assault Battalion cleared a fortified Russian strongpoint in the northern part of Pokrovsk, securing an important logistics route for Ukrainian defenders inside the city.
The situation is also difficult in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Russian forces are trying to get behind a Ukrainian grouping in the city of Huliaipole. To that end, Russian units are attacking on the Aleksandrovsk axis. Ukrainian troops repelled 12 attacks there yesterday, the General Staff said. Kremlin-aligned media claimed Russian forces had captured the settlements of Novoye, Sladkoye and Rybnoe on the Aleksandrovsk axis, but the General Staff denied those reports.
Earlier, reports said Russia was urgently redeploying reserves toward Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
