#attrition-warfare

#attrition-warfare

The Soviet front of World War II, the Great Patriotic War for Russians, lasted 1,418 days. The special military operation as Vladimir Putin dubbed Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, reached its 1,418-day mark on January 12. Nearly four years of war that, in the Soviet theater, resulted in the retreat of the Third Reich from Moscow and the Volga to Berlin, while the Kremlin's current campaign remains entrenched in Donbas.

For Ukraine, the logic of this war has never changed: make Russia pay dearly for every metre. Force them to bleed for ground, and in Pokrovsk, that strategy is paying dividends. Before Russia's full-scale invasion, Pokrovsk was a town of 80,000, a logistics hub and administrative centre in western Donetsk. Now it's a shattered shell. What remains is not a city, but a position: roads, supply routes, and terrain that shape the wider fight.