Zelensky said the defense of Donetsk towns was a top priority as special forces were deployed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said defending Pokrovsk was a “priority.” This is because elite special forces were deployed to villages on the eastern front that were fighting.

Ukrainian military sources told the BBC that special forces from the Military Intelligence and Strike Group were being used as regular infantry to protect supply lines for the army, which holds towns in the Donbas region.

Reports of Russian advances around the strategic city west of Donetsk are increasing. Ukraine denied the claim that its forces were surrounded.

As part of the peace deal, Moscow wants Kiev to cede the entire Donbas region, including parts it does not currently control.

Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

The deployment of special forces suggests Kiev officials are determined to take control of the city that Russia has been trying to occupy for more than a year.

Local media reported that Kirillo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, was in the area to directly supervise the operation.

Pokrovsk is a major shipping and supply hub, and capturing it could advance Russian efforts to occupy the rest of the country.

But Kiev also believes that the occupation will help Russia persuade the United States that its military operation is succeeding and that the West should therefore accede to its demands.

Washington is growing increasingly frustrated with the Kremlin’s failure to make progress in peace talks. This led to US President Donald Trump imposing sanctions on his country’s two largest oil producers and withdrawing plans for a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy has said he is open to Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire that would freeze the fighting on the front lines. Russia has publicly called for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the rest of Donbas.

The Ukrainian president said in his night speech: “Pokrovsk is our priority. We continue to destroy the occupying forces and that is the most important thing. We must stop them where they reach and destroy them there.”

Images shared with news agencies showed Ukrainian Black Hawk helicopters deploying about 10 troops near Pokrovsk, but the location and date could not be confirmed.

The Russian Defense Ministry said all 11 troops who landed by helicopter were killed and claimed they had disrupted the deployment of Ukrainian military special forces northwest of the city.

DeepState, a Ukrainian open source monitoring group, estimates that about half of Pokrovsk is a so-called “grey area” where neither side has full control.

A military source in Donetsk told the BBC that Ukrainian forces were not surrounded but their supply lines were under attack by Russian forces.

“The situation in the city has changed so much that (Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General) Sirsky is sending elite troops into the city to stabilize it,” he said.

They included special forces and attack units from Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Service (GUR), he said.

“There is a fight going on right now over train stations and industrial zones in the West. The fighting over industrial zones has reduced logistics from roughly vehicle-based to foot-based.

“The Ukrainian army is not surrounded physically, but operationally, which means that all logistics are under fire control.”

The U.S.-based Institute for War Studies said Ukrainian forces had made “some progress” during a recent counteroffensive north of Pokrovsk, but said the town was “primarily a disputed ‘grey zone’.”