The battle for Pokrovsk has become a modern-day Stalingrad. Some Russian troops are reportedly refusing to enter the city as that means almost certain death. The fighting is swinging back and forth, but there are no fixed positions. Units jump from building to building and drones hover over the heads of everyone bring down sudden death like some Biblical avenging angel.

I spent six months living in Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the mid90s which is littered with monuments to that epic battle. The shot-up mill building was left and also “Pavlov’s house” named after the commander of its defence – an apartment building in the centre of the city, which is still here, half blown to pieces.

It was the scene of one of the more epic clashes between Soviet defenders and the Wehrmacht. Pavlov and his team of 25 took and held the building for 58 days against repeated German attacks. On Sovetskaya Street, the building was strategically located overlooking a key square near the Volga River and was vital to controlling movement through the city centre. At one point the defenders fell to fewer than a dozen, but reinforcements were able to resupply them at night across the Volga and they killed hundreds of German soldiers.

The Soviet high command turned the defence of the building into a propaganda victory. It was dubbed “the fortress” and featured in Red Army newspapers, in a similar way as the sniper Yuri Zaitsev was lionised (and eventually made into a film, starring Jude Law).

From what I can make out from the reports, a very similar battle is unfolding in Pokrovsk. A week ago, it looked like the city was going to fall until the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) launched a series of counterattacks and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has since brought up reinforcements to hit back. The AFU seems to have been largely driven out of the city except for the industrial quarter in the north of the city, where Pavlov’s house style battles are reportedly raging. The city has largely been destroyed and corpses are lying on the street everywhere from both sides, according to what reporting is coming out. It all sounds like pure hell on earth.

Still, the analysts, and even Bankova, seem resigned to the likelihood that the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) will win this one. The Kyiv Independent, which has been relentlessly upbeat on the Ukraine story, went as far as to do a piece on what comes next if Pokrovsk falls. I wrote up the news from the weekend and there was a balanced, if subdued, report from Michael Kofman, one of the best military analysts covering the war, based on extensive interviews. He too seems resigned to the fact that the AFU won’t hang on to the city, but he, and Institute for the Study of War (ISW), report that Russia has failed to consolidate on its gains.

This all comes in the context of the mushrooming $100mn Energoatom corruption scandal that is turning into a major headache for Bankova. Zelenskiy’s reputation was badly tarnished by his attempt to gag the anti-corruption organs (NABU and SAPO) with the Law 12414 in July, but it has taken a body blow now. Dissent is rising as the people are dissatisfied with Zelenskiy’s response. The main problem is no arrest warrant has been issued for his buddy Timur Mindich. Zelenskiy revoked his Ukrainian citizenship, but that only puts Mindich, who is believed to be sheltering in Israel, beyond the reach of Ukrainian law. Zelenskiy also imposed sanctions on him, again, for only three years, so presumably if this scandal dies down, he can return to Ukraine after that.

A few second-tier people have been detained, but the big players have been left untouched, particularly the former Minister of Energy Herman Halushchenko. Euromaidan Press did a deep dive into the story and points out that while 60 of state-owned utility Ukrenergo’s assets were protected with highly effective concrete defences, the same work at Energoatom was never carried out leaving them defenceless against Russian attacks. Indeed, when former Ukrenergo chief Volodymyr Kudrytskyi complained about this in 2024 he was quickly put on trial on corruption charges and the €1.5bn he raised to build these defences immediately dried up to almost nothing – a huge own goal.

The whole scandal highlights what we have been saying for years: corruption is not a problem of the system; corruption is the system. In a country without a working judiciary or property rights, power is the ability to give or take away cushy jobs where deputies can skim off the top. This was told to me by a former Ukrainian Minister who was trying to clean up the defence sector pre-war and ended up resigning in protest when former President Petro Poroshenko tried to foist his own placemen into the top slots in some state-owned companies.

Nothing has changed after almost three decades of independence. Mindich was clearly tipped off and SAPO has opened an investigation. In an investigation by Ukrainska Pravda, court permissions were filed on Friday, ahead of the raids on Monday November 10, and Mindich had plenty of time to clean out his office and skip the country. Reportedly, he didn’t even bother to lock the front of the apartment with the golden toilet after he left.

What is it with these solid gold toilets? They are everywhere. Former president Viktor Yanukovych also had one, as does Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan according to our Turkey bureau. Even US President Donald Trump is guilty – have you seen the Oval Office make over? Do a before and after image search.

It’s a post-Soviet thing: elites and the rich seem to see gold as “tasteful.” The late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky went in for this, and even Russian President Vladimir Putin is guilty of neo-classic Doric columns, gold leaf and the obligatory massive flatscreen TV, I'm told by people that have visited his official Gorki-4 dacha in Moscow.

Will Pokrovsk fall? Will the Energoatom scandal bring the government down? Everything is up in the air, but things look very bad for Ukraine now.

Zelenskiy is currently touring the EU to ask for help, but he has the same problems as ever: the lack of men, money and materiel. Except all these problems are far worse than they were when we first wrote this up just over a year ago.

Put it this way: Finnish President Alexander Stubb just set out the three hurdles Zelenskiy needs to clear to stay in the war and force a ceasefire on Putin. It looks like he will clear none of them. Excuse me for being pessimistic. I would love to see Ukraine win as much as the next man, but the facts don’t paint that picture.