(Bloomberg) -- Local authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk said they’d started drilling wells and distributing water to residents after a Russian attack knocked out a filtering station a day after a natural gas supply facility was destroyed.
Russia has concentrated a large portion of its troops near the key logistical hub in the Donetsk region over the last few months, with its possible capture likely to increase the threat to a strategically placed cluster of towns and villages around Kramatorsk and Slovyansk to the northeast.
About 28,000 people remain in and around of Pokrovsk despite a mandatory evacuation order, Donetsk region Governor Vadym Filashkin said Thursday. The number of working stores and ATMs is steadily decreasing, he said on Telegram.
“The situation is difficult and won’t improve soon,” Filashkin said, reiterating his call to residents to leave for safer areas.
While Kremlin forces regularly launch missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities, the Russian military has also pressed its firepower advantage against eastern centers such as Avdiivka, which fell this year after a months-long siege.
Russian troops were positioned less than 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the Pokrovsk’s southeastern edge, according to DeepState, a map service maintained in cooperation with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Moscow’s forces made local advances southeast of the city over recent days, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
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