On Wednesday, Ukraine’s leading military official dismissed assertions that his forces were surrounded in the city of Pokrovsk. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested the possibility of a tactical withdrawal to safeguard soldiers.

“There is no indication of Russian dominance over Pokrovsk or any operational encirclement of our Defense Forces,” said Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi in a Facebook post following his visit to the front lines.

He acknowledged that Pokrovsk is a focal point for the slowly advancing Russian troops, while Ukrainian forces are striving to “gradually” secure vital areas and maintain open supply routes.

The Moscow Times was unable to independently verify his statements.

Once home to a population of around 60,000, Pokrovsk has endured more than a year and a half of unrelenting Russian bombardment. Its capture would enable Russia to push northward toward larger Ukrainian cities and strengthen its control over the eastern Donetsk region, which it claims to have annexed in September 2022.

According to open-source maps from the Ukrainian monitoring organization DeepState, Russian troops are advancing from the north, east, and south, suggesting a partial encirclement.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov remarked on Thursday that the “positions of the Kyiv regime are deteriorating day by day.”

Ukraine contends that Russian assertions regarding the certain capture of Pokrovsk are part of a strategic information campaign aimed at pressuring its Western allies into compelling a peace agreement with Moscow that would necessitate the relinquishment of control over the Donetsk region.

Zelensky, in a recent Bloomberg interview, stated that Ukrainian troops should not be required to “die for the sake of ruins,” indicating that commanders have the autonomy to make decisions based on the evolving situation at the front.