General Staff: since the beginning of the day, there have been 79 clashes, about a third of them in the Pokrovsky direction

At the front since the beginning of this day, 79 combat clashes took place, about a third of them – in the Pokrovsky direction, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported in its summary as of 4:00 p.m.

“In the Pokrovsky direction, the Russian invaders made 28 attempts to dislodge our defenders from their occupied positions in the areas of Nikanorivka, Rodynske, Mirnograd, Kotlyna, Udachne, Molodetske, Horikhov and towards Filia,” the message reads.

In addition, according to the report, since the beginning of the day, Ukrainian forces have repelled 16 attacks by Russian troops in the Gulyaipil direction, and 10 in the Kostiantyniv direction. Also, fighting continued in the South Slobozhan, Kupyan, Lyman, Slovian, Kramatorsk, Oleksandriv directions.

According to the American Institute for the Study of War, Russian forces increased their average rate of advance in 2025 thanks to the new operational pattern, but did not achieve their priority objectives in the specified time frames.

On December 17, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, stated that the enemy had increased the group to the number of about 710,000 soldiers in order to conduct a strategic offensive operation.

According to him, the Russian troops have been trying to capture Pokrovsk in Donetsk region for more than 17 months, but Ukrainian units are holding the defense and intercepting the initiative.

Fighting in Pokrovsk has been going on since October 2025, when the Russian army managed to break through to the city after several months of fighting on its slopes. Almost immediately, Russian soldiers began to be recorded in Pokrovsk’s satellite city of Mirnograd. On the map of the DeepState project, most of both are now under the control of the aggressor, the rest is in the “gray zone”. The Pokrovsky direction, according to the reports of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, constantly leads in terms of the number of Russian assaults.