Ukrainians Bury Relatives In Backyards As Russian Attacks On Pokrovsk Continue

Ukraine's strategic town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region remains one of the most embattled places on the front line.

Current Time correspondent Oleksiy Prodayvoda, who visited Pokrovsk on April 29, said that after the months of continuous Russian attacks, the town looks "apocalyptic."

Since late 2024, ground assaults have brought little results for the Russia's advances. Now, the Russian military is "razing the town to the ground," Prodayvoda said.

Fierce fighting has taken a heavy toll on Pokrovsk, which appears almost uninhabitable, although some residents remain in place.

Due to increasingly dangerous conditions, local residents have little ability to bury their relatives in town's cemetery, a Ukrainian soldier fighting in Pokrovsk said.

"A dead person is just taken out of the house and buried in a field.... It's a disaster," he added.

Ukrainians Bury Relatives In Backyards As Russian Attacks On Pokrovsk Continue

Prodayvoda, who has been reporting from the front lines in the east and south of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, says the difference between battles for Pokrovsk and Bakhmut or Avdiyvika is the fiber-optic cables that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have begun to use recently.

"Garages, yards, trees, poles -- everything is covered in fiber cables from drones that fly over Pokrovsk every day," he added.

Earlier, Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskiy, said Russian forces were still "stubbornly" trying to break through Ukraine's defenses and reach the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region.

With Pokrovsk located less than 20 kilometers from Dnipropetrovsk, the area has now seen some of the heaviest fighting.

On May 3, senior communications officer in a Ukrainian brigade operating in Pokrovsk told the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) the Russian forces are attempting to advance into Dnipropetrovsk by May 9.

In late April, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested a three-day cease-fire surrounding its May 9 Victory Day remembrances -- a proposal dismissed by Kyiv as "theater."

"The Russians are certainly not going to cease fire completely," said Ruslan, the Ukrainian soldier fighting in Pokrovsk.

"If it calms down here, they will give nightmares to civilians.... You see what's happening. They're launching over a hundred Shahed-drones each night," he added.