There has been a flurry of media reports about a likely Ukrainian retreat from the beleaguered city of Pokrovsk, where Russian assaults have been resisted for some fifteen months. The headlines tell the story: New York Times: ‘Ukraine’s Dilemma as a City Teeters: Save Lives or Keep Holding On’; The Economist: ‘Ukraine’s valiant defence of Pokrovsk is nearing its end’; Washington Post: ‘As Pokrovsk is set to fall, Ukraine must choose to fight or save troops.’ According to a Ukrainian journalist speaking to the BBC, some 1,000 troops risk being surrounded.
The advice conveyed by these stories, including from Ukrainian commentators, is that after a gallant fight it is time to get out and move on.
Yet neither President Zelenskyy nor Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has suggested that such a fateful decision is imminent. On 12 November Syrskyi insisted that
‘there is no talk of Russian control over the city of Pokrovsk or operational encirclement of the Defence Forces grouping.’
The next day, in an interview with Bloomberg, President Zelenskyy acknowledged a ‘very difficult’ situation, and said that any troop withdrawals would be a matter for the military commanders on the ground. He presented a dilemma rather than an obvious course of action: ‘Nobody is pushing them to die for the sake of ruins,’ and the defence of the city could end up just ‘too costly for us – the most important for us is our soldiers.’ But then he added that the people would find it difficult to accept giving up on eastern territories and warned that:
‘nobody will guarantee you that if they seize this or that town, they won’t move further. There is no deterrent factor.’
This is not the first time this dilemma has been faced and is unlikely to be the last. In this post I consider why these decisions are rarely straightforward and how they were addressed earlier in the war. I also examine the distinctive features of this particular situation, both operational and political, that will shape Ukraine’s eventual decision.
It is always difficult to assess an unfolding battle from a distance, especially when accounts are partial and often contradictory. We can see what both sides are trying to do but less so how well they are succeeding. As always there is a risk in these assessments that we pay most attention to pending Ukrainian decisions while taking it for granted that there are no decisions for the Russians to take, as if they will keep grinding on whatever their casualties and however long it is taking them to take cities that they have claimed for months to be almost theirs.