Ukraine on Sunday (February 16, 2025) said it retook a mining village near the embattled strategic city of Pokrovsk, which Russia has tried to capture for months, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces had made gains.

“A number of counter-attacks by Ukrainian forces have had some success,” a spokesman for troops in the area, Viktor Tregubov, said. “We can already talk about the liberation of the village of Pishchane.”

The announcement came just over a month after Russia said it took Pishchane, around 8 km southwest of Pokrovsk. The village is home to a key mine that belongs to Ukraine’s main steelmaker Metinvest.