As long as Ukraine was defending Pokrovsk, it was a vitally important logistical center. Now that Russia has taken it, it’s supposedly not that crucial after all. From Ted Snider at theamericanconservative.com:
On December 1, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin travelled to a battlefield command post to receive a briefing from his chief of staff, General Valery Gerasimov. It was good news for Putin. Gerasimov told Putin that Pokrovsk had been liberated: it had fallen to the Russian armed forces.
As part of a desperate push to justify the continued flow of billions of dollars of arms from Europe by selling the hope that the war is not yet lost, Ukraine has denied the claim, claiming instead that it is just “propaganda” to influence negotiations that does “not correspond to reality.” But the reality is that, if Pokrovsk has not fallen, it has 95 percent fallen and will be completely in Russian hands any day.
Prior to the fall of Pokrovsk, all sides agreed that it was a key logistical hub; subsequent to its fall, Ukraine and its European partners have downplayed its significance, claiming the victory to be more of a Russian morale and propaganda victory than a strategic one. The consistently quoted talking point is that at Russia’s rate of advance over the last nearly four years, it would take “at least another year” to capture the rest of Donetsk.
But the calculation is sophistry that deliberately ignores the nature of Russia’s attritional strategy. The nearly four years of war has not been a war to advance rapidly across territory. It has been a war to attrit Ukraine’s weapons and troops until they are stretched so thin that they collapse under the force of the still-growing Russian force. To claim that, at the current rate, it will take another year for the Ukrainian front to collapse is like claiming that, if it took 100 years for a brick wall to disintegrate by 80 percent, it will, at the current rate, take 25 more years for it to fall. In reality it might crumble at any minute.
The fall of Pokrovsk is important for two reasons: on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. On the battlefield, the loss of the key logistical hub would threaten the Ukrainian armed forces’ ability to supply their troops in the Donbas with weapons and food. It would also leave other key Ukrainian cities facing encirclement and Russia with miles of undefended field as they continue their advance west.
Duh winning?
Ivan says you lose.
You will need a bigger press gang for the Northern Eurasia partition.