Russia said it seized a village near Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region as it advanced toward the city, which faces a critical security situation, a humanitarian group told Newsweek.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had captured Kalynove, a settlement of about 200 people located about 16 miles southeast of Pokrovsk. Control of Pokrovsk would deliver a significant boost to Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s quest to control the whole of the region.
Moscow’s claim has not been independently verified. Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry for comment.
On August 20, an evacuation was declared in Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of 60,000, and its surrounding towns and villages.
However, “evacuation trains from Pokrovsk have been halted,” Michael Chernomorets, the CEO of Rescue Now, told Newsweek. “Currently, there are around 26,000 people still in the city, including 1,076 children. People are unable to leave the dangerous area.”
This illustrative image from August 8 shows Ukrainian service members of the 43rd Artillery Brigade firing self-propelled artillery 2S7 Pion toward Russian positions in an undisclosed area in the Pokrovsk district, eastern Donetsk region. An evacuation has been declared in Pokrovsk.
ROMAN PILIPEY/Getty Images
With the war’s front line approaching Pokrovsk, the last civilian hospital in the city—which had provided urgent care to war-wounded patients—has had to relocate all staff, medical equipment and supplies, said Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), whose ambulances continue operating in the city and surrounding areas.
“We witnessed health care workers salvaging equipment to transport them to safer locations,” Christopher Stokes, MSF’s emergency coordinator, told Newsweek in a statement. “Patients had already been evacuated.”
MSF said that during the course of the war, medical facilities located within 20 miles of conflict areas in eastern and southern Ukraine have been either damaged or completely destroyed because of Russian shelling.
The Institute for the Study of War said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had regained some limited positions in the Pokrovsk direction about 20 miles southeast of the city. It added that Russian forces had recently advanced in the nearby city of Toretsk, located about 40 miles east of Pokrovsk.
Citing defense analysis, the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo said on Saturday that Russian troops had captured much less territory in the Pokrovsk direction over the past week than during earlier periods.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander in chief, told CNN recently that Moscow’s push near the city was losing momentum.
DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source intelligence-monitoring site, said that Russian forces had captured only 4 square miles in the past week. This is a drop from the 28 square miles reportedly seized in the last week of August and the 23 square miles in each of the two preceding weeks.
