For more than a year since capturing the ruins of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, the 600,000-strong Russian army of occupation in Ukraine has had its sights set on one main objective: Pokrovsk, a city in Donetsk with a pre-war population of 60,000 that anchors a chain of important towns and cities stretching north toward the border with Russia.
On Tuesday, a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group managed to cross the no-man’s-land south of Pokrovsk and take shelter in a building on the city’s edge. They likely weren’t there long before a Ukrainian drone operated by the 155th Mechanized Brigade spotted them—and the brigade destroyed the building in a precise strike.
“The guys were caught,” Russian military blogger Anatoly Radov confirmed.
A 155th Mechanized Brigade trooper was less circumspect. “Those two are dead for sure,” they said in a video circulated by one Ukrainian open-source intelligence analyst.
A hard march
It cost Russia tens of thousands of casualties and hundreds of vehicles marching the roughly 40 kilometers from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk. But march they did. As 2024 turned into 2025, two Russian field armies—each overseeing as many as a dozen regiments with up to 2,000 troops apiece—reached Pokrovsk’s outskirts. The lead Russian elements hunkered down just a few miles from the city.
Ukraine rushed reinforcements, including the newly formed 155th Mechanized Brigade with German-made Leopard 2 tanks. But the hastily organized and poorly led brigade disintegrated upon arrival, prompting senior Ukrainian officials to step in.
Drone warfare helped save Pokrovsk’s defenders. Operating miles behind enemy lines, drones turned the key Ocheretyne-Prohres road into a graveyard of Russian supply trucks and armored vehicles. Drone raids “significantly complicated logistics for the [Russian armed forces],” noted the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team in a dispatch.
Today, the 155th Mechanized Brigade is battle-hardened, and the Russian forces south of Pokrovsk are in worse shape. It’s one thing for saboteurs to briefly infiltrate the edge of the city—and die trying. It’s another for a full-scale Russian assault to hold ground there.
Still, Ukraine expects more attempts. “The Pokrovsk direction is viewed by Ukraine’s military-political leadership as the absolute priority for the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported.
