This grab from a handout footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry press service late on December 1, 2025, shows the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, amid the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict.AFP
The Russian defence ministry one day earlier posted a video showing Russian soldiers raising their country's flag over a central square in Pokrovsk.
"Search and assault operations and the elimination of the enemy in urban areas continue in Pokrovsk," the Ukrainian military's eastern command wrote on social media.
It also said -- without explicitly denying Moscow's claim -- that Russian troops that planted a flag in the town's centre had been beaten back.
It added that Russian forces had taken advantage of poor weather conditions to move into the centre of the road and rail hub that had around 60,000 residents before Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
An AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) showed this week that the Russian army last month made its biggest advance in Ukraine since November 2024.
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