Russian troops mount pressure on Ukrainian logistics hub of Pokrovsk

By Olena Harmash

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's top commander said on Monday that Russian forces were staging relentless assaults to try to advance towards the town of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in the east, and that there was active fighting taking place along the entire front line.

Nearly 29 months since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has stepped up its mobilisation effort to address its manpower shortages and been reinforced by supplies of western artillery shells, but Russian troops have continued to inch forward.

"The enemy pays no attention to their fairly high level of losses and continues to push through towards Pokrovsk," Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement from the eastern front.

Pokrovsk is less than 25 km (15 miles) from Russian-occupied land, according to open-source intelligence battlefield maps, and lies at an intersection of roads and a railway that makes it an important logistics point for the military and for civilians in the east.

"Active combat operations of varying intensity are taking place along the entire front," Syrskyi said, noting that Russian forces were also trying to capture floodplain islands near the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.

FIGHTING RAGES IN EAST

Fierce battles, he said, also raged near several eastern villages and towns, including Krasnohorivka and Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop town whose capture would bring Russia closer to threatening important Kyiv-held Donetsk region cities.

Russia staged 39 assaults on the Pokrovsk front in the last 24 hours of a total 117 registered along the front line, the military said in its daily battlefield readout.

Russian forces captured two villages in the east over the weekend, Russian media said, citing the Defence Ministry.

Though Kyiv's weary troops have been on the backfoot this year with Russia again on the offensive and keeping up the pressure, Moscow's progress has been slow.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who travels to China this week on a diplomatic trip, estimated on Friday that Russia controlled 17.68% of Ukrainian territory compared with 17.61% on Jan. 1, 2024.

A senior NATO official said this month that Russia lacked the munitions and troops for a major offensive in Ukraine and would need to secure significant ammunition supplies from other countries beyond what it already has in order to do so.

LONG-RANGE STRIKES

Russia has pounded Ukraine's electricity system with airstrikes in recent months, causing regular power cuts across the country.

Ukraine has used domestic-made drones to attack targets in Russia and staged a major overnight strike that damaged its Tuapse oil refinery, its biggest on the Black Sea.

In his statement, Syrskyi said it was vital for Kyiv to conduct long-range strikes on Russian forces, echoing Ukrainian officials who have appealed to allies to allow Kyiv to use Western-supplied weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.

Russia has warned that the use of U.S. and Western weapons against targets inside Russia could trigger a new level of confrontation.

Ukraine is also grappling with a shortage of short-range anti-aircraft missiles to repel Russian reconnaissance drones and is having to rely on drones and other electronic warfare systems for defence, he said.

(Reporting by Olena Harmash; Editing by Tom Balmforth and Sharon Singleton)