Ukrainian troops maintain control of the northern part of Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s army chief says. Putin says Russia will take Donbas by force or Ukraine’s troops will withdraw. The UN General Assembly passes a resolution demanding that Russia return abducted Ukrainian children.
Ukrainian troops maintain control of northern part of Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s army chief says
Ukrainian troops maintain control of the northern part of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Telegram Thursday. They also proactively impede Russian forces to amass assault groups near Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad and advance further, bypassing the cities, he added.
Syrskyi said an “extremely difficult stage of defense of the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration” was underway. He said he once again held operational meetings with commanders of the groups of forces, corps, brigades, regiments and separate battalions. Ukrainian troops continue to maintain control of certain areas inside the cities.
“While [Russia’s] occupying forces disregard their personnel losses, Ukrainian commanders have a clear understanding of how important it is to save the lives and health of their troops,” Syrskyi said.
Syrskyi said he had discussed with the commanders coordinated deployment and advance of the units, timely rotation of the units conducting search and assault operations that aim to locate and destroy the enemy.
They also made several decisions on combat control, joint action and supplies to support defensive efforts.
Syrskyi also noted the importance of additional supply lines, timely medical evacuations, counterbattery warfare and air defenses against Russian drones.
Ukrainian troops stopped 52 Russian assault operations near the towns and villages of Volodymyrivka, Mayak, Rodynske, Chervonyi Lyman, Novoekonomichne, Pokrovsk, Kotlyne, Udachne, Molodetske, Dachne and toward Novopavlivka, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Wednesday.
Russia has advanced in Pokrovsk, Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState said Wednesday.
Russian forces became stuck in street fighting in Pokrovsk, 7th Rapid Reaction Corps of the Air Assault Forces said on social media Wednesday, adding that reports of the city’s capture are not true.
Putin says Russia will take Donbas by force or Ukraine’s troops will withdraw
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said in an interview with India Today published on Thursday that Russia would take full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw.
“Either we liberate these territories by force, or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories,” he said in an interview simultaneously translated into English.
“Our special military operation isn’t the start of a war, but rather an attempt to end one that the West ignited sing Ukraine’s nationalists,” he said. “We attempted to negotiate with them [Ukraine] back in 2022,” he later added.
“This is a complex task and a challenging mission that President Trump took upon himself,” Putin said when asked about the specifics of the peace talks, refraining from providing details.
In a written news piece, Russian state media TASS restated what Putin said in the interview, saying that “Russia would liberate Donbas and Novorossiya in any case – by military or other means.”
Putin has consistently demanded that Ukraine concede all of Donbas and “Novorossiya,” referring to occupied and non-occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner sat down for the high-level talks with Putin in the Kremlin Tuesday. The talks in the Russian capital were “very useful, constructive, and highly substantive,” but a “compromise option was not found,” Russian foreign policy adviser and Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after the meeting. “Productive,” Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev wrote in a post on X.
A planned meeting in Brussels between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and a visiting U.S. delegation that included Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been canceled, Kyiv Post’s Chief Correspondent in Washington DC Alex Raufoglu, citing his sources, wrote on X Wednesday.
Secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov was supposed to arrive in the U.S. on Thursday to meet with President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. There were no updates on whether this meeting had happened.
UN General Assembly passes resolution demanding that Russia return abducted Ukrainian children
The UN General Assembly passed a resolution on Wednesday that called for a return of Ukrainian children deported by Russia. The resolution passed by a vote of 91 to 12 with 57 abstentions.
Russia and 11 other countries, including Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Mali, Niger, Nicaragua and Sudan voted against the resolution.
It “demands that the Russian Federation ensure the immediate, safe and unconditional return of all Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred or deported,” and urges Moscow to cease any further practices of deportation, separation from families, changes of citizenship, adoption or placement in foster families, and indoctrination.
The UN General Assembly expressed “deep concern” over “the fate of all Ukrainian children who have been separated from their families since 2014, including those forcibly transferred within the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine by the Russian Federation and those deported to the Russian Federation.”
These actions violate the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I of 1977 “which prohibit individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying Power, regardless of their motive,” it reads.
The assembly also said it deplores “the legislative and administrative measures taken by the Russian Federation since 2022 that simplify the procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship for Ukrainian children, particularly orphans, children deprived of parental care and unaccompanied children.”
The document also highlights “the need to investigate and ensure accountability for those responsible for forcible transfers and deportations of children, in accordance with international law.”
The UN General Assembly reaffirmed support for “the efforts by various Member States and international organizations” to ensure “the prompt, safe and unconditional return of forcibly transferred and deported Ukrainian children to Ukraine,” and “their subsequent rehabilitation and reintegration.”
It also hailed the efforts of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.
The text also calls on the UN Secretary-General to step up his good offices, including through his Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, to coordinate UN action, engage with Russia on tracking down those taken, and to ensure access for international monitoring and humanitarian organizations.
