Ukraine's top military commander says his troops are still holding out in the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk which Russia says its forces are at last enclosing in a pincer movement after more than a year of fighting.

Russia has been trying to capture Pokrovsk, dubbed "the gateway to Donetsk," since mid-2024 in its campaign to control the entirety of Donetsk, a Ukrainian province it claims to have annexed.

The city, home to 70,000 people before the war, has been all but completely destroyed and depopulated.

Capturing Pokrovsk would be the most important Russian territorial gain inside Ukraine since Russian forces took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024 after one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Since then, Russia has made steady but slow gains in intense fighting along th

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