- NOVEMBER 6: Ukraine appears at increasing risk of losing the city of Pokrovsk, an important stronghold in eastern Ukraine where its embattled defenders have held off Russia’s grinding assaults for more than a year and a half.
- NOVEMBER 7: Russian forces appear to be on the brink of finally seizing the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
- NOVEMBER 8: The city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine has fallen to the Russian Army. The Ukrainian Army defending Pokrovsk utterly collapsed. Zelensky has been notified the city is lost.
The significance of the Russians taking control of Pokrovsk is that it was the last fortified position between the Russian front and the Dnieper River, which I have always believed to be one of the Russian’s primary objective. Given the nature of the terrain to the west of the city, it should take very long for the Russians to push the front forward to the river, and thereby extend the effective battlespace to 25 kilometers beyond the far side of the river.
The advent of 5GW is going to have a major change on tactics, operations, and strategy alike. For example, having control of the dronespace means that river crossings are almost certainly going to be much, much easier than they were in the WWII era, which has obvious operational and strategic implications.
It’s also worth noting that the Russians took Pokrovsk much faster, and at much lower cost, than they did previous fortified cities like Maripol and Bakhmut.