Ukraine/Russia Update Day 1,361….Russia Attacks Cities…Pokrovsk Battle Continues ……

The War Marches On Unabated ……

ISW.…Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 14, 2025

1. The Russian military command appears to be prioritizing the seizure of Pokrovsk over efforts to close the wider Ukrainian pocket in the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad area.
2. Russia continues to rely on North Korea for manpower to offset Russia’s labor and military personnel shortages.
3. Ukrainian forces continue to enhance their air defense system against Russian strikes in ways that offer Europe and the United States valuable lessons.
4. Russian forces conducted a series of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine on the night of November 13 and 14 that largely targeted Ukrainian civilian areas.
5. Ukrainian forces conducted missile and drone strikes against Russian energy and military infrastructure on the night of November 13 to 14.
6. Ukrainian forces advanced near Kupyansk and Borova and in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area. Russian forces advanced near Siversk and Pokrovsk.

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Ukraine’s Dilemma as Pokrovsk Teeters: Save Lives or Keep Holding On

With Russia on the verge of capturing Pokrovsk, a strategic city in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv faces a cruelly familiar choice. It could pull back, concede defeat and save lives. Or it could fight on, delaying a symbolic and tactical victory for Moscow but risking heavier losses of its own.

It’s a dilemma that has haunted the Ukrainian military throughout the war, as it has struggled to contain Russian advances. Ukraine chose to hold on amid grinding battles in cities like Bakhmut and Avdiivka, both of which ultimately fell to Moscow. Critics argued that a timely retreat could have saved soldiers, Kyiv’s most precious resource in a war of attrition against a much larger adversary.

Ukraine’s argument for holding cities as long as possible is that it forces the Russian Army to expend vast numbers of troops, leaving it weakened in the battles to come. There is also a political element, as the two sides wage a battle of narratives. Kyiv wants to prevent Moscow from claiming successes that could sap morale at home and that the Kremlin could use to persuade the Trump administration that supporting Ukraine is a losing wager…..

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Russia Pummels Kyiv as It Torments Ukrainian Civilians

Russian missiles and drones pounded Kyiv overnight in an attack that killed six people and sparked fires in buildings across the city, the local authorities said. It was the latest in a series of Russian aerial assaults that have often targeted the country’s power grid in an effort to plunge Ukrainians into cold and darkness as winter looms.

The attack also targeted Kharkiv in the northeast, limiting electricity and disrupting water supplies. But the main focus appeared to be Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where air-raid sirens first wailed shortly before midnight to signal the start of the attack and sounded again at 5 a.m. to mark its end.

Between those alerts, residents heard a grimly familiar soundtrack — the buzz of attack drones over neighborhoods, the staccato of heavy machine guns trying to shoot them down and the thud of air-defense missiles trying to intercept Russian ones….

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“This was a deliberately calculated attack aimed at causing maximum harm to people and civilian infrastructure,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media. “In Kyiv alone, dozens of apartment buildings have been damaged.” He added that missile debris had hit the Azerbaijani Embassy.

Mr. Zelensky said, “Ukraine is responding to these strikes with long-range strength,” a reference to Kyiv’s campaign of long-range strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure, aimed at cutting off the energy revenues that fuel the Kremlin’s war effort….

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Daily Kos Grunt Report for Today……