Russian attack | Russia said it captured a mining town in Donetsk, Ukraine seems to have slowed down the Russian advance on the important Pokrovsk

Russia announced on Sunday that it had completely captured the mining town of Novohrodivka in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reports. About 14,000 people lived in the city before the war.

Novohrodivka is one more stage in Russia’s attempts to take over the city of Pokrovsky in the Donetsk region, which is important for Ukraine’s transport and military supplies.

Reuters reports a Ukrainian-born pro-Russian blogger Yuri Podolyakan having published maps on social media, according to which Russian troops would attack Ukrainian positions less than seven kilometers from Pokrovsky.

Analyst of the Finnish Black Bird Group, which follows the war situation in Ukraine from open sources Pasi Paroinen says that even though the Russians have taken over several villages and towns on the way to Pokrovski, additional Ukrainian reinforcements seem to have stopped the Russian advance “at least for the time being” about eight kilometers from Pokrovski.

Paroinen according to the mining town of Novohrodivka is centrally located when it comes to defending Pokrovsky.

“Novohrodivka could also have been a good defense position for Ukraine, and therefore its relatively quick loss was unfortunate,” he says.

According to Paroinen, the attention of the outside world has now been much on Pokrovsky, but according to him, from the Ukrainian point of view, the most serious situation is between the village of Halytsynivka and the city of Krasnohorivka, located southeast of Novohrodivka.

“The Ukrainian 59th brigade will probably have to withdraw in the face of the threat of encirclement from that pocket formed in the last two weeks.”

Paroinen says that Ukraine has added the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of the Ground Forces to the defense of Pokrovsk, and in addition, several National Guard brigades have been brought to the area from other fronts, each with possibly around a couple of thousand soldiers.

“While the Ukrainian resistance in front of Pokrovsk has now strengthened after additional troops have arrived in the area, the tip of the Russian attack has started to turn towards the south. During the past two weeks, the vast majority of the villages captured by the Russians are in this direction,” Paroinen says and lists the names of several different villages.

The Ukrainian military sent an explosive drone towards Russian positions near Pokrovsk on August 31. Picture: Serhii Nuzhnenko / Reuters

Paroinen according to the situation in Ukraine, the fact that the National Guard has been ordered to protect Pokrosvki says a lot about the situation in Ukraine, even though the Guard’s tasks are traditionally in Ukraine’s internal security. According to him, the reality of the war has forced other branches of the armed forces to fight as part of the ground forces.

“The fact that the National Guard units have now been called to respond to this Pokrovski crisis to this extent indicates either that no other forces are available or that the National Guard units are believed to have more fighting will and ability.”

According to Paroinen, the problem is that Ukraine’s different arms branches each have their own culture, recruiting ability, training process and operating model. Now they are all doing more or less similar tasks alongside the ground forces.

“The positive side can be, for example, the qualitative differences visible in the will to fight and the cohesion of the troops, in which case certain units can be used in more challenging spearhead tasks,” he says.

A father staying in Pokrovski hugged his 11-year-old son Maksym before the departure of the evacuation train on August 29. Picture: Sami Kero / HS

Russian the goal is to take control of the entire Donbas region, i.e. Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. According to Reuters, Russia has taken control of about 80 percent of Donbas.

Pokrovsk is a major rail and road transport hub that has played a very important role as a supply center for Ukrainian forces on the eastern front.

If Russia were to capture Pokrovsk and another important city, Toretsk, it would clearly have better capabilities to conquer the entire Donbas region. Russian troops have already advanced to Toretsk, where a full-scale urban war is taking place.