Welcome to the Euro-intelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, I Zazana Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today we will talk about Ukraine again. There has been a change. Russia has moved in to the important strategic town of Prokrovsk in the oblast of Donetsk.

It's a part of Ukraine that Russia, part of the Donbos that Russia does not yet occupy.

Jack, what happened in Pokrovsk?

Well, the situation is still very fluid, but what's been confirmed is that Russian troops are in the city. The Ukrainian military has said 200. I don't know

whether that's necessarily the case or not. They said that a couple of days ago. The Russian

military said that they were around the main train station in the city. But I think regardless of

kind of the precise details of this, what is very clear now is that Russia has actually entered

the city itself. So they've been sort of on the outskirts of Percross for quite a while, actually.

They've been around the city for more than a year, sort of trying to encircle it, basically,

but now they've actually just fully entered it.

And it's quite a big development. I mean, I go so far as to say that it's one of the biggest,

if not the biggest developments to take place on that particular section of the front in years.

It's a big development because Prokrovsk is very important as a transport and logistics hub to get troops and supplies to other places in the surrounding area of the Dombas and further west in Ukraine.

So if you look at it, it's kind of the easiest access roads for Ukraine up through to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which are the main cities in the Dombas that Ukraine still holds, as well as further south to Dushchikka and Konstantinivka.

They run through Pukovsk.

So it becomes a lot more difficult for Ukraine if they lose that city. I mean, they're already sort of

partially cut off from these, from these transport routes anyways. So that, you know, that's what it can do for

them, right? And for Russia, conversely, capturing Prokvsk and having control of these road and rail

access points around the city makes their lives a lot easier in terms of getting, again,

troops and equipment in and out. So it makes the defense of that band of towns and cities

from Slovianska in the north down to Kostianitnikka down in the south, quite a bit more difficult. And that's also important because

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