Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Ukrainian forces were facing fierce fighting around the city of Pokrovsk in the east. Russia has been announcing the purported capture of villages near the town that acts as a logistics hub on an almost daily basis.

Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, told a meeting of senior officials that the situation around Pokrovsk was the current focal point of its attention in the war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

"All operational directions were covered, with particular focus on Pokrovsk. It receives the most attention," Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian forces, he said, were also "continuing to act" in border areas in the northern Sumy region, where Russian troops have gained a foothold in recent weeks.

Syrskyi, in a separate report on the Telegram messaging app, described Pokrovsk and five other sectors as among the most difficult theatres along the 1,000-kilometre front.

"The Russian Federation is paying the maximum price for attempting a 'summer offensive,' " Syrskyi wrote.

A Russian focus for months

Russian forces have been trying to close in on Pokrovsk for months. The road and rail hub with a pre-war population of about 60,000 has been all but evacuated. Serhii Dobriak, the head of the city's military administration, has said less than 1,500 residents remain.

Syrskyi in May reported that Kyiv's troops had stabilized the situation around the town, also the site of the only facility in Ukraine producing coking coal for the country's steel industry.

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Russia's Defence Ministry on Thursday announced the capture of two villages on either side of Pokrovsk — Zvirove to the west and Novoekonomichne to the east. Earlier in the week, Moscow declared that it had "liberated" a third village near the city, Novotoretske.

Ukrainian officials have made no acknowledgement that the villages have changed hands. The General Staff of Ukraine's military said in an evening report that two of them — Zvirove and Novoekonomichne — were in areas where Russian troops were trying to penetrate Ukrainian defences.

In the Sumy region, where Russian troops are trying to establish what Russian leader Vladimir Putin calls a "buffer zone," the popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Kyiv's forces had retaken a previously lost village.

DeepState, which relies on open source reports to track the presence of Russian forces, said Ukrainian troops had restored control over the village of Kindrativka. There was no official comment from either side.