Russian salients threaten Ukrainian forces with encirclement near Pokrovsk

Russian forces are continuing to advance toward the Donetsk town of Pokrovsk, seizing nearby areas, it has been reported, while a rescue worker told Newsweek about efforts to get residents to safety as enemy troops approach.

“The situation is really hard and getting harder,” said Oleksandr Humeniuk, a volunteer who has been evacuating civilians from the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions since the start of the war and from Pokrovsk from last month. “The Russians are going really fast and occupying towns very quickly,” Humeniuk told Newsweek, through a translator.

Since August, Russian forces have made gains toward Pokrovsk, which is a road and rail hub for the Ukrainian military to supply other Kyiv-held outposts in the region.

On August 20, an evacuation was declared in Pokrovsk and its surrounding villages, but the proximity of hostilities caused the cancellation of trains spiriting people to safety.

Humeniuk and his team are working with the Rescue Now foundation and the NGO “Rose on the Hand,” to evacuate residents. The workers have so far helped get 600 people to safety, but sometimes residents are reluctant to leave their homes and get onto the transport that his team provides.

“People do believe in Ukraine and because of that, they don’t feel they are ready to evacuate,” Humeniuk said. “They wait until the very last minute, like when their home has been hit in a missile attack, or Russians have entered the town and are killing civilians.”

Moscow’s troops are now within 5 miles of the town and just 2½ miles from Myrnohrad, and the settlements’ potential capture would disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front.

Geolocated footage on Monday showed Russian advances southeast of Pokrovsk, by the settlements of Tsukuryne and Mykolaivka. Russian military bloggers said Moscow’s troops had seized the villages of Zhelanne Druhe and Krutyi Yar.

Russian troops are reportedly using more mobile units to try to capture the area and attack Ukrainian forces from several directions at once, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Monday. The independent think tank added that elements of Russia’s 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade were operating in the salient.

The latest ISW map shows Russian advances southeast of Pokrovsk, including west and east of Mykolaivka and to the railroad line north of Tsukuryne.

Meanwhile, pro-Moscow military bloggers said that Russian forces had also advanced northwest and southwest of Ukrainsk, where Humeniuk had been working with his evacuation team until it was captured by Moscow.

Video footage shared with Newsweek shows residents being put into vans and taken to buses to get out of the town. In one clip, they tell a Russian soldier they are trying to get people out of a basement and into a car. “Load the people quickly and get the hell out,” the Russian soldier says.

Elderly residents and those with pets they want to keep safe pose extra logistic hurdles, as does the risk posed by getting people out of the front line amid Russian missiles. “The focus is to work with the towns that can be occupied soon,” Humeniuk said. “The situation is critical.”