The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Ukrainian troops should surrender to save themselves in Pokrovsk, a transport and supply hub seen as a gateway to bigger nearby cities.

Moscow expects to take Kupiansk in a week while Ukraine claims to have expelled the Russians from the northern part of the city. Ukraine continues to launch attacks on Russian military targets and energy facilities.

Russia is betting that its military machine will eventually overwhelm its western neighbor, and that battle is playing out in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia has deployed about 170,000 troops in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, aiming to capture the city of Pokrovsk.

A Russian soldier has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in Ukraine for executing a Ukrainian serviceman who had surrendered on the battlefield — the first ruling for such a war crime since Russia began its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

The Kremlin is focusing its fire on Pokrovsk, a gateway to the Donetsk region, which Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has long coveted.

Ukrainian forces hit an important fuel pipeline in the Moscow region that supplies the Russian army, Ukraine's military intelligence said Saturday, as Russia kept up a sustained campaign of massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

In late October, Ukraine carried out a drone attack on the Belgorod Reservoir dam in southwestern Russia. The strike marked a major turning point in the war, forcing people to leave their homes and seriously affecting Russian military activities.