Ukraine's Commandos Rush Into Pokrovsk On An Urgent Mission: Hold Open An Escape Route

Survivors from two Ukrainian brigades are trapped in Pokrovsk & looking for a way out

Tymur Special Unit commandos. Tymur Special Unit photo

Ukrainian commandos have deployed inside the ruins of Pokrovsk. Their mission: to hold off a much larger Russian force long enough for the survivors of two shattered Ukrainian brigades to escape the devastated city.

After a year of brutal fighting against a Russian force five times its size, the Ukrainian garrison in Pokrovsk—a mining city with a pre-war population of more than 100,000—is tired, depleted and nearly cut off from the main Ukrainian force arrayed across the fields and villages north of the city.

The critical, rear-guard role the Ukrainian special operations forces are playing in the final days of the battle for Pokrovsk may explain why, on Oct. 29, a pair of American-made Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters operated by the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate rotored low into western Pokrovsk and dropped off at least one squad of commandos from the elite Tymur Special Unit.

A few dozen—or even a few hundred—special operators can’t turn the tide in Pokrovsk all by themselves. The Russian Center Group of Forces has massed at least 100,000 troops and hundreds of armored vehicles in the sector south and east of Pokrovsk.

Turning the Russian tide isn’t the commandos’ objective. Their objective, it seems, is temporarily holding back the tide.