Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on July 26 that fierce battles are raging around the key logistical hub eastern city of Pokrovsk, which Russian forces make making an intensified effort to capture.

His comments come after reports last week that the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) had broken through the city limits, but the situation on ground remains confused. Ukraine’s Defence Ministry has given little information, but Zelenskiy says the city has become “the main focus of the war” and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is mounting a counteroffensive to hold the Russians at bay.

“Pokrovsk... receives the most attention,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address on July 25, following a briefing from Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi during a senior leadership meeting.

“All operational directions were covered, with particular focus on Pokrovsk,” Zelensky stated.

Pokrovsk is a key road and rail junction that supplies Ukraine’s entire Donbas front. It allows supplies into the front and wounded out. If it falls then military analysts say it would be a major strategic setback for the AFU operations to hold the line against a Russian advance. Beyond Pokrovsk the land is flat and relatively empty all the way up to the Dnipro River that cuts the country in half.

With a pre-war population of around 60,000, Pokrovsk has seen most of its residents already evacuated. The city is also home to Ukraine’s only coking coal mine essential to the steel industry that is a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the cash strapped government, underscoring its strategic and economic importance.

Syrskyi, writing separately on Telegram, described Pokrovsk and five other sectors as “among the most difficult theatres” in the conflict, reports Reuters. “The Russian Federation is paying the maximum price for attempting a ‘summer offensive,’” he wrote.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence announced on July 24 the capture of two villages near Pokrovsk — Zvirove to the west and Novoekonomichne to the east. Earlier in the week, a third settlement, Novotoretske, was also declared “liberated” by Moscow, according to Reuters.

Ukrainian officials have not confirmed any territorial losses in the area. In its evening update, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces noted that Zvirove and Novoekonomichne were in areas where Russian troops were “trying to penetrate Ukrainian defences.”

Meanwhile, fighting continues in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, where the AFR reportedly massed 50,000 troops where the Kremlin wants to establish a buffer zone,  and where Russian troops have made incursions in recent weeks. Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were “continuing to act” along the border zones. He added the frontline in Sumy has been reinforced and is currently stable.

In the same region, the military blog DeepState reported that Ukrainian troops had recaptured the village of Kindrativka. The blog, which tracks front-line developments using open-source intelligence, did not cite official confirmation, and neither Kyiv nor Moscow has commented on the claim, Reuters reports.