‘If they don’t die, our infantry will’: Ukraine’s pivotal battle for Donetsk

The Russian soldiers sent to storm Ukrainian positions arrived at a graveyard. Around them was the ruined village of Mykhailivka . From above, Ukrainian spy drones watched. One soldier vanished under a tree. Another jogged towards a shell-walloped cottage. Back at a control observation centre, Maj Oleksandr Fanagey muttered a few words.

Seconds later, a Ukrainian kamikaze drone hit a moving Russian. A live video stream showed that he survived but his left leg was injured. The soldier bottom-shuffled towards a patch of grass and tried to pull a bandage from a green backpack. “He will die for sure,” Fanagey predicted. “The enemy doesn’t bother evacuating its wounded.”

Late last month, Russian forward units seized a mine just outside Mykhailivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk oblast. Their mini-advance was part of a sweeping Russian offensive . It began in February with the capture of Avdiivika. Its goal: to expand a narrow salient deep into Ukrainian territory and overrun the city of Pokrovsk, 11 miles (18km) away.

Pokrovsk is a logistics base and major transport hub for Ukraine’s armed forces. Multiple road and rail lines intersect here. Without it, Kyiv will struggle to move troops, food and ammunition to other parts of an overstretched frontline – to the embattled city of Toretsk, farther east, for example, and to Kurakhove , to the south. The city’s fate is bound up with that of Donetsk province as a whole.

A bloody battle looms. Russian troops are a mere six miles away. There is continual noise from incoming and outgoing shells. Last week, Russian warplanes smashed bridges in and around the city, setting the stage for a future frontal attack. One bust bridge had linked the T0504 highway with the neighbouring town of Myrnohrad. Engineers in orange jackets were busy building an alternative dirt route.

Another enemy bomb clipped the bridge above Pokrovsk’s train station, now closed and boarded up along with supermarkets, restaurants and banks. Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad were once home to 100,000 people. Most but not all have now fled, with sections of the city spookily empty. Bombs have hit many central buildings, including the office of Ukraine’s pension fund.

The Russians are pressing from two directions. They swallowed up the town of Novohrodivka – population 18,000 – when its Ukrainian defenders retreated last week, seemingly without much of a fight. Russian forces are also moving forward from the south-east and from Ukrainsk, which fell a few days ago. Beyond a patch of forest and a railway track from Mykhailivka is the Ukrainian-held town of Selydove.

The Kremlin’s creeping progress comes at a significant human cost. Sitting in front of a bank of monitors, Fanagey, the artillery commander of the national guard’s 15th brigade , zoomed in on grisly images. Six dead Russians could be seen near a row of old graves marked with blue wooden crosses. Another soldier, bloated and missing a head, lay in a vegetable patch. “The whole village is a cemetery for them,” the major said.

A dozen bodies could be seen in an anti-tank ditch. Around them was the debris of war: a machine gun, helmets, provisions. The gully leads from Mykhailivka’s abandoned mine – its pit wheel head still intact – to an avenue of shattered houses. Artillery strikes have dinted yellow fields. “Over the last two weeks Russia’s momentum has nearly stopped. We have slowed down their advance. They are moving forward but with less potential,” Fanagey said.

His comments confirm – in this sector at least – claims by Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, that Russia’s assault on Pokrovsk has weakened . In August, Syrskyi launched a surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk oblast. This has helped relieve pressure on other parts of the frontline, including the Zaporizhzhia region and neighbouring Kherson. Moscow had pulled only “a few troops” from the Pokrovsk area, the major said. He added: “They have a huge collection of forces.”

The Russians have changed tactics. These days they rarely use armoured vehicles in a battlefield saturated with drones. Instead, small groups of 10 to 15 soldiers sneak forward on foot, day and night, the commander said, using different paths. If undetected, they assemble at a rendezvous point and try to infiltrate Ukrainian lines. “It’s quantity with the Russians, not quality. We see so many ‘meat attacks’,” Fanagey said.

Two weeks ago the Russians sent a mechanised column into Mykhailivka, consisting of a Soviet-era T-72 tank and two infantry fighting vehicles. Ukrainian soldiers opened fire. The tank’s crew – driver, gunner and mechanic – bailed out and hid in some shrubs. A drone finished them off. The Ukrainians drove away in the tank. “It’s been a long time since we got a working armed vehicle from the enemy,” said Stanislav, the major’s deputy.

According to Stanislav, Russia is able to advance because its army is much bigger. “We don’t have enough ammo. For every one shell we fire, they fire seven. Or more. We lack infantry,” he admitted. “The situation is a bit better than six months ago [when the US Congress blocked deliveries of weapons]. But with this tempo of fighting it isn’t enough. Russia is a big country. It has money and resources. It funds its military with oil and gas.”

The battle for Pokrovsk is very likely to be the culmination of Moscow’s military campaign this year. A decade ago, Russian forces covertly seized the eastern regional capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk. Vladimir Putin’s political and strategic objective is to capture the whole of Donetsk oblast, as well as three other Ukrainian provinces he “annexed” in 2022. Stanislav said taking Pokrovsk would not be easy for the Russians. “We can hold it,” he said.

About 18,000 people in Pokrovsk have ignored official calls to evacuate. If Russian forces occupy the city they will be a short drive from the oblast’s administrative borders and the road to Dnipro. From Pokrovsk they would be able to menace and possibly cut off a chain of Ukrainian garrison cities to the north: Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Already they are bombarding the highway between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka.

Vitalii Milovidov, the 15th brigade’s press officer, said the west was party to blame for Ukraine’s step-by-step reversals in 2024. He cited White House restrictions on the use of US-suppled long-range weapons – the subject of discussions last week in Washington between Joe Biden and Keir Starmer.

Milovidov said that if deep strikes were permitted, Ukraine could hit weapons dumps and aerodromes used by Russia in its grinding assault on Ukraine’s east. “It will make enemy logistics more difficult. They will have to move everything 250-300km back from the frontline,” he noted. “If we had got a green light earlier, our military situation would be different. There would be no advance on Pokrovsk.”

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Fanagey said he was optimistic Ukraine could still win, despite the daunting size of its opponent. He cited the accurate work of his experienced artillery and drone units, as well as the contribution made by neighbouring brigades. “We’ve had three years of war. If we receive enough weapons, victory is absolutely possible.” And what about Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons? “He’s lying,” the commander said cheerfully.

Back in Mykhailivka, puffs of grey smoke rose into a clear blue sky. A Ukrainian shell had hit a cottage. The building burned furiously. None of the village’s inhabitants – 1,300 of them, once – remain. The only souls are Russian intruders. Did the commander feel remorse for killing so many of them? “No. They are the enemy, here to take our land. If they don’t die, our infantry will die instead. I never thought I would be glad to kill someone, but I hate them.”