Pokrovsk Has Fallen, Now What?

~by Sean Paul Kelley

With the encirclement of the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad pocket by Russia now complete, it is only days, a week or two at most, until mopping up operations are complete. This is an indisputable Russian victory, but don’t expect the war to change much. Russia’s strategy of attrition is about incremental gains that create unsustainable enemy losses, not the acquisition of territory. A fact that Western, especially retired American generals consistently get wrong. They expect the Russians to fight like Americans. That’s a terrible assumption to make.

On June 30 of this year I wrote that Russia was beginning its advance on Pokrovsk in earnest.  Now, a lot of Western commentators, like Gen. Keane, have made the claim in the legacy media, along with other retired US generals, that the Russian’s have been bogged down in and around the Pokrovsk area for a year and only have 30-something kilometers to show for their efforts. This is why I cite the above link about the start of Russia’s encirclement of Pokrovsk. American generals obsesses about big red arrows on maps, rapid armor advances taking territory, breakthroughs while Russia’s attrition of Ukrainian soldiers massively degrades the Ukraine’s ability to prosecute the war. US generals, however, display staggering amounts of hypocrisy in discussions about Russia’s massive and successful strategic bombing campaign. Those selfsame generals who cheered American Shock and Awe war porn that dominated the news coming out of places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Funny how they now label the same strategy, employed now by evil Russia, as war crimes and focus on Russia’s killing of civilians, which the Russians are studiously trying to avoid and largely succeeding. But I digress.

American generals, think tankers and media personalities are ignorant, be it vincible ignorance or supererogatory, of what a strategy of attrition really is and what it looks like. Here’s the best definition I’ve got for you: using military power to gradually degrade an opponents military resources, i.e. killing as many of your adversary’s soldiers and wrecking as much of his kit as possible and/or breaking his will to fight. Nowhere in the generally accepted definition of attritional warfare does it say a word about occupying as much land as possible. That comes later. Much later.

With Pokrovsk surrounded what should we expect from the Russians? The landscape west of Pokrovsk is mostly open fields for many, many kilometers, with few tree lines, villages or ravines for Russian forces to utilize for an effective defense against the Ukraine’s drones; hardly an ideal landscape for attritional warfare. In fact, with the Ukraine’s ability to manufacture drones still intact it would be a killing field, littered with Russian armor, APCs, infantrymen and anything else the Russians might send into the open.

Make no mistake, the Russians are going to have to march across the landscape west of Pokrovsk at some point, but I posit the following near-term moves by the Russians. I’ll follow up with some developments I expect later in 2026.

First, Russia will continue encircling other salients, or cauldrons as the Russians prefer to call them, they appear to be enveloping, like the Kupyansk-Senkove salient or the potential envelopment of Konstantinivka. These areas offer excellent defensive positions and landscapes for Russia’s small-teams based attritional style of attack along the line of contact. It begins with artillery and/or missile bombardment, small teams then attack and destroy Ukrainian positions, kill or capture soldiers, retreat, then let the Ukrainians return. Rinse and repeat with drone coverage dominating overhead and you’ve got a style of war that chews up time like Andre the Giant hoovered up food at all you can eat buffets. It’s efficacy is not in doubt so long as you understand Russian strategy. If you’re ignorant of it, well, then you are expecting a big armored break-out after Pokrovsk, which won’t happen, because that’s not how Russia is conducting this war.

Second, Russia will consolidate its gains in and around Pokrovsk, after the Ukrainian soldiers in the pocket are killed or surrender. For some time after I foresee Russia utilization of tactical defense within an offensive framework, much like what American generals called the strategic defensive during our Civil War. In essence, at first they’ll capture positions, then dare the Ukrainians to take them back by appearing weak, digging in, rotating out tired soldiers, and firming up logistics. Subsequent Ukrainian attacks lead to mounting casualties. Then do it again.

In the context of capturing Pokrovsk, Russia will continue targeting the Ukraine’s industrial base, especially drone manufacturing sites. And it will hammer the nearby cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk with drones, missiles and FAB glide bombs, but it will be some time until Russian ground forces are within reach of mounting an attack on either city. Much will also depend on how well the Ukraine’s armed forces perform.

In war your opponent gets a vote on whether you succeed or not. Will the Ukraine’s armed forces hold up or might we see a general collapse in 2026? The Ukraine is now engaged in the widespread press ganging of men to fight on the front, reports this story at Responsible Statecraft. Some of the men press-ganged into service have reportedly died from blunt-force trauma, after beatings with iron bars and one young man died from injuries sustained attempting to jump out of the vehicle he’d been forced into. Most of the ‘busificaiton’ as it is euphemistically called has taken place in 2025 and thousands of such videos can be found here, proof that the Ukraine’s manpower shortages are growing to crisis levels. Such activities by Ukrainian recruiters also bodes ill for the armed forces, and adjacently indicative of the efficacy of Russia’s strategy of attritional warfare. Although press-ganging is not something Russia directly influences, it’s a clear symptom of the unsustainably large amounts of casualties the Ukraine has and continues to sustain.

In the near-term expect the war on the ground to continue as it has since 2023. Russia will grind it out, slowly and patiently. I always find it laughable when commentators claim that hardliners in the Kremlin are chomping at the bit for Putin to launch a massive offensive. This is stupid, Western group-think. Why is it so hard to understand that Russians are naturally endowed with a deep well of patience to draw upon? Especially Putin. That is not to say there will be no fireworks in the near future. But they will be arriving from a different direction than Russian soldiers will. They will come from above.

A near-term imperative for Russian forces is a way to achieve drone dominance along the line of contact. Russia has, by and large, achieved a hybrid-kind of air superiority. This has largely been achieved by its manufacturing prowess, producing, according to some sources, nearly a thousand Geran-2 drones a month. One report dated this September describes a new jet-powered version, the Geran-3, that is operational, largely resistant to electronic warfare and can be fitted with a 90 kilo thermobaric warhead, making them extremely lethal, inexpensive and plentiful. Russia also manufactures and utilizes on a daily basis hundreds of Gerbera decoy drones. By using the Geran-2 and 3s in conjunction with Gerbera decoys and higher value missiles like the Iskander and the hypersonic Kinzhal the Ukraine’s ability to mount anything approaching an effective air defense is nullified.

Achieving drone superiority over the line of contact is another matter altogether. The Ukraine can still manufacture enough FPV drones to give the Russians pause, forcing their continued use of small-teams to attack, destroy and then retreat. But, the Russian’s are innovating. For example, there are recent reports of the deployment of a mother-ship drone with two FPV drones attached with fiber optic cables. The mother ship drone flies at altitudes above the FPV’s alleged EW bubble and by connecting its two FPV drones via fiber optic cables achieves complete EW avoidance. While not a game changer, widespread deployment of such drones would make the war that much more difficult for the Ukraine to prosecute effectively.

Pokrovsk is a major victory for Russia, a significant morale booster for the troops and those on the home front and proves the efficacy of Russia’s strategy of attrition. But don’t expect much to change after Pokrovsk. It’s a loss for the Ukraine. The question, how big of a loss? How many troops died or will be captured once the pocket is completely mopped up remains the most important variable of the battle; how badly will it effect the Ukrainian armed forces morale is what bears watching, by Putin and Zelensky alike.