Enemy is facing shortage of personnel in Pokrovsk direction: occupiers who signed contract at end of January this year are being taken prisoner

Pokrovsk – a small part of it – remains under the control of the Ukrainian army, but investigations have already been opened into the commanders of some units for the loss of the city. Someone has to be blamed. As far as I know, the documents have even been handed over to the SBI. And the front line itself is once again shaking the feeling that any commander can be arrested at any moment.

For what? There is! And this is despite the fact that the city cannot yet be considered lost. We still have several positions there.

For a long time, our fighters held their ground right next to the railway tracks in the northern part of the city. But they are gradually being pushed out of there. And how can they hold on when the enemy is primarily destroying logistics routes to make it impossible to approach their positions or leave them? Petrol tankers and lorries are the main targets on the roads. But because the enemy has enough FPVs and large drones with drops, any vehicle becomes a target. Ground robotic complexes (GRCs) have become particularly valuable now. There are already many of them around Pokrovsk.

A couple of days ago, when there was thick fog, they tried to drive in with equipment to unload and replace people. But nothing came of it. Everything was burned, including armoured vehicles and quad bikes... Only one quad bike returned from that assault – it carried away the wounded.

The front line confirms that the Russians have captured the village of Rivne, which served as a supply route for our positions in Myrnohrad, and are advancing in Rodynske. All this means that it will be impossible to withdraw our fighters from Myrnohrad, where our positions are located, in an organised manner. They will be able to leave in small groups, at their own risk. As a rule, commanders do not even give orders to leave, but say: "Try." And we will again hear stories about "record" numbers of days spent in positions, with injuries, about exhausted and tormented fighters.

With the arrival of the thaw, a terrible problem has arisen on the front line: the dugouts are flooding. Literally. "At least my pilots got to see the sun, they had to climb out of the dugouts," says one of the officers whose unit is located at the junction of the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions. When I pointed out that this was dangerous, he calmly replied: "Better to get out than drown. The water reached the ceiling of some dugouts. A lot of equipment and the guys' belongings were lost. In some places, the water came very quickly."

Without clearing the northern part of Pokrovsk, the enemy focused on destroying and capturing the village of Hryshyne, through which logistics to our positions in Pokrovsk had been carried out for a long time. There are already infiltrated groups there. And here, our and enemy positions are mixed, which creates a certain chaos.

However, as our fighters note, it seems that the enemy is experiencing serious personnel problems in this area. It can be said that to the left of Pokrovsk, Russian army personnel whose contracts were signed less than a month ago are now being taken prisoner en masse. "That is, there is no training whatsoever," a scout comments on the data of these prisoners. "Or if there is any, it is minimal: they were shown how to provide first aid and how to disassemble an automatic weapon. This was not the case before. Training was mandatory. It's very much like a conveyor belt: they catch them and send them off. One of those we captured recently signed his contract on 23 January this year. It's fair to say that the enemy has run out of people in our sector."

Another sign of this is that previously, army soldiers guarded the enemy's warehouses and logistics routes in the rear, but now the military police do it. It is also this service that is conducting sweeps in Pokrovsk, checking basements, and identifying the local population in the city and nearby villages. Previously, the military police did not appear closer than 30 kilometres from the line of combat.

This is most likely due to the fact that some of the troops from the Pokrovsk direction have been transferred to Huliaipole. This is according to the commander of the 1st Assault Regiment named after Dmytro Kotsiubailo, DaVinci's friend, Dmytro Filatov, call sign Perun. Interceptions and intelligence indicate an increase in manpower and equipment, and the intensity of combat operations has increased here. It is not yet clear how the enemy will act, as there are two possible scenarios. It is near Huliaipole that the Ukrainian army has recently advanced. Therefore, we can expect the enemy to "throw forces at stopping the Ukrainian advance or at attacking Zaporizhzhia itself," says Perun. He adds: "The Armed Forces are ready for both the first and second scenarios."

But while the situation near Huliaipole has been brought under control, the situation in Stepnohirsk, located 20 kilometres from Zaporizhzhia, is very difficult. This settlement is almost lost. And the enemy is clinging to it with its teeth.

I would also like to show what is happening to the local people who are waiting for the Russians. There was a revealing conversation with a resident of Pokrovsk, who, together with her husband and his mother, was waiting for the occupiers and baking bread for them. This woman's husband even wanted to go to war. But things did not turn out as expected. The video of this woman's testimony appeared, by the way, on a Russian Telegram channel. And it confirms once again why the occupiers are coming to our land: to destroy and rape.