Pokrovsk & Myrnohrad Have Fallen

The last few Ukrainian troops in the ruined settlements are retreating north

When a first-person-view drone from the Ukrainian 38th Marine Brigade hunted down and killed a Russian soldier riding on an electric scooter on or just before Nov. 19, it was bad news for the Russian—but good news for Russia. (See video below.)

That’s because the Russian scooter troop was riding through Myrnohrad, a town with a pre-war population of 46,000 that, along with adjacent Pokrovsk—with its pre-war population of 60,000—has been the locus of the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast for a full year now.

There wouldn’t be Russian scooter troops in Myrnohrad if the Ukrainian garrison in the settlement, the 38th Marine Brigade and 25th Air Assault Brigade, were still actively defending it. Yes, the Ukrainian marines managed to fly an FPV drone over Myrnohrad and plink that one Russian soldier. But if that unlucky Russian could scoot into Myrnohrad from staging bases farther south, more Russians are surely coming—and fast.