Ukraine maintains its defense in Pokrovsk despite the tense situation. Zelenskyy opposes Russian claims about the encirclement of the city and highlights the reaction of the Ukrainian army.
Russia has deployed approximately 170,000 troops to capture the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on Friday. He denied claims that Russian forces surrounded the city in eastern Ukraine. TASR informs about it according to the report of the AP agency.
Meeting with wounded soldiers at a Moscow hospital on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukrainian troops were surrounded in strategic Pokrovsk and also in Kupiansk, an important railway hub, and that the Russian military was willing to provide safe entry for Ukrainian and Western journalists to “see what’s really going on there.”
Zelenskyi – like the supreme commander of the Ukrainian army Olexandr Syrskyi on Thursday – admitted that the situation in Pokrovsk is difficult and admitted that several Russian troops managed to penetrate into the city. However, he insisted that the Ukrainians were gradually expelling them.
Russia has the superiority in numbers
“The Russians are in Pokrovsk,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference in Kyiv. “They are being liquidated gradually, because we have to protect our soldiers,” the Ukrainian president added.
The AP agency recalled that during previous sieges, Ukraine withdrew its soldiers from some cities to avoid possible losses. Ukrainian forces are at a disadvantage compared to the larger Russian military, which Moscow has recently been using to its advantage.
On Thursday, Syrskyi reported that he had visited the Pokrovska region and met with military commanders there. According to him, Russia is increasing its activity in this area and has a numerical advantage. Moscow’s claims about the encirclement of Ukrainians in Pokrovsk, which the Russians have been trying to conquer for more than a year, and also in Kupiansk, however, do not correspond to reality, he pointed out.
