Almost two years after announcing it would annex four regions of Ukraine, Russia is still trying to fully occupy the marked territories. In practice, the Russians accomplished their plan only in Luhansk, while the other three territories, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, are still under Kyiv’s control. Russian forces are particularly pressing the attack in the Donetsk region, where they have managed to report some progress this year and continue to advance slowly but at great cost.
Pokrovsk, one of Russia’s main targets in Donetsk
Along with Luhansk, Pokrovsk is the heart of Donbas, an industrial and mining region that Russia has long had its eyes on. In 2014, after the ousting of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and the coming to power of pro-European forces in Kyiv, the so-called “little green men” appeared in Donbas, armed men in uniforms without military insignia, who captured parts of Donetsk and Luhansk and proclaimed two breakaway republics. It wasn’t a Russian invasion proper in official terms, in spite of Moscow's obvious involvement: “former” Russian army and intelligence officers were part of the leadership of the self-proclaimed republics, separatists were spotted brandishing Russian weapons, and reports came in of Russian troops doing actual fighting in battles, despite not wearing Russian military insignia. Over the next eight years, the war in Donbas claimed the lives of 14,000 people.
Overall, the conflict amounted to little actual fighting: after the initial advances made by separatists, the frontline stabilized and separatist forces eventually seized a fraction of Donbas, with very few military clashes. Prior to February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, civilians could still cross from the rebel-held part of Donbas to the territory under Kyiv’s control. However, that’s impossible today, which means the remaining Ukrainian population is condemned to living under Russian occupation.
Before 2022, one could still grasp the shape of Donetsk's high-rise buildings in the distance, many wondering if the city would ever return to Ukraine. Today, however, the city of Donetsk can no longer be seen from Ukrainian territories, not even remotely, as the frontline has moved tens of kilometers westwards.
Right now, the Russians are pressing their advance on towns like Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, which I recently visited, and which may soon be engulfed by the frontline. The two towns are already targeted by Russian shelling and have sustained significant destruction.
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Fearing the Russian advance, people are afraid to speak freely
On my way to Pokrovsk, I passed Pavlograd, a town in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, where debris from several missiles lie visible to the eye on the side of the road, along with two Russian armored vehicles, marked with the letter “Z”, barely visible under the rust. Further along the road I spotted a Soviet Lada, the Zhiguli model, riddled with bullets.
Leaving Dnipropetrovsk, after going through a great number of military checkpoints, I finally saw the historic “welcome” sign just before entering the Donetsk region. The whole area around the famous sign is studded with flags bearing the signatures of hundreds of soldiers and personalities, including president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I lingered here a few minutes, and during this time, a “Marshrutka”-type minibus carrying servicemen pulled over close to my position. Some of the servicemen got off, took a few pictures before getting back onto the minibus and heading east. Most likely, these soldiers came from other parts of the country, being posted in “hot zones”, which is what Ukrainians call the territories near the frontline, or those with a high risk of military clashes. Even though, to me, the journey was quite nerve-racking and psychologically consuming, I cannot compare my one-day visit to Donetsk to the experience of these Ukrainian servicemen, to whom arrival in the region is a certainty, with no guarantee of getting back alive.
Before 2016, Pokrovsk was known by its Russian name, “Krasnoarmiisk”. It had a population of over 60,000 people before the 2022 invasion. The town continues to be exposed to waves of attacks, the Russians mounting a very strong offensive in this sector. For instance, between the time of my arrival on June 1 and the date this article was published, the Russians will have advanced nearly 10 kilometers towards Pokrovsk.
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Already from the first glance, I immediately understood I had set foot in the most dangerous city I've ever visited, out of all the 20 Ukrainian regions I've been to. With little exception, all the windows of the buildings had been replaced with pressed sawdust boards, as glass windows are far too dangerous a luxury that no one here can afford anymore. The darkness of people’s homes, along with the infernal noise of explosions, create a hellish landscape that civilians neither wanted nor deserved.
As early as 2022, the authorities called a mandatory evacuation of civilians from the Donetsk region, where the new normal is incompatible with life. In a late-night speech, president Zelenskyy said that the hundreds of thousands of people of Donbas must be evacuated, because “the more people leave the Donetsk region now, the less people the Russian army will have time to kill”.
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It is obvious, however, there are many people who, for the time being, have refused to leave. I saw them quickly making their way down the streets. They wouldn’t really talk to me, and when they did, they held back, refraining from speaking freely because they fear that if their city falls under Russian occupation, they might get punished for what they say.
“Most people are living in fear and are slowly moving out of the city”, a woman whose name I didn't get hastily told me. “I'm scared, but what am I supposed to do? We have nowhere to go right now. We are planning to leave, but right now, we just sit and wait. I’m not planning on having children either, as things are not looking great in Ukraine”. I asked her if people want the Russians to take over, and the woman quickly replied: “They don't, they don't. Who would want that?” The other people I talked to on the street said they fear for their lives, and simply asked back “What can we do?”
In Myrnohrad, a town located about 10 kilometers from Pokrovsk, the destruction gets a lot worse. Efforts to clear the ruins of buildings would be enormous, and it’s not even a priority, given the current state of affairs. A mining town with the local refinery and coal mine among the top employers, Myrnohrad sees so many attacks, that news only circulates on local Telegram groups, while the major publications seldom report on the horrors occurring in the area. At times, Myrnohrad comes into national or international spotlight when guided missiles hit kindergartens, as it happened on the eve of my arrival, or when Russian Grom-E1 guided missiles hit residential buildings, as it happened in March this year. It is impossible to imagine what this place looked like before the war. The damaged facades of buildings make it hard to even guess what purpose some of them served before they were turned into ruins.
For the time being, the Russians press the attack despite sustaining heavy losses
After the failure of the Ukrainian offensive in the summer of 2023, Russia took the initiative again in October when it launched an assault on the town of Avdiivka. The battle for Avdiivka was one of the bloodiest of the war so far. It lasted more than four months before clashes eventually ended with the withdrawal of the Ukrainians and the city (or whatever was left of it) falling into Russian hands.
The capture of Avdiivka paved the way for the Russian advance on Pokrovsk. Russian forces simultaneously attacked other sectors of the frontline (for instance, Chasiv Yar, also in Donetsk, or Kharkiv region, where they crossed the border and opened a new frontline), trying to exploit the shortage of ammunition and manpower Ukrainian forces were struggling with in spring. To achieve their goal, the Russians resorted to their usual tactics: heavy bombing, which became even more lethal with the increased use of glide bombs, and costly infantry assaults that disregarded the heavy losses sustained, which in in May were estimated to stand at over a thousand people a day.
The shortage of ammunition was caused primarily by the blocking of US support in Congress due to domestic political disputes in the United States, while the lack of military personnel was owed to Ukraine's shortcomings in recruiting new troops. Meanwhile, US assistance has resumed and Ukraine has a new mobilization law. In the coming weeks, Kyiv is expected to receive the first F-15 jets, and NATO has promised Kyiv 43 billion USD in aid next year.
That’s a long time to wait, however. Freshly arrived ammunition and weapons have helped Ukrainian forces even the balance of power on the battlefield, but the Russians still hold the supremacy in terms of firepower. As for the new recruits, new servicemen have to be trained before they can be sent to the front, which means it will take a while before they can get to conflict areas.
For the time being, Russian troops are still trying to break Ukraine’s defenses in order to fully annex the Donetsk region. Although the Russians have lost about half a million men since the start of the war, they still seem capable of continuing their assaults and sustaining heavy losses.
I left Donetsk with more questions than answers. Will I ever get a chance to come back? Will the Russians capture the entire region? Will Ukrainian troops succeed in protecting their territories? If so, at what cost? In the end, standing in the shadow of the same sign that bears the hundreds of signatures of soldiers who never returned home, I wondered if Donbas will ever return to Ukraine, or if this border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts will be the future border between Ukraine and Russia.
