Russian forces have entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian frontline town of Toretsk, late on Monday, the 7th of October, less than a week after the capture of Vuhledar, citing Ukrainian armed forces, reports Reuters and The Kyiv Independent.
The advance of Moscow’s forces has shown Russia’s overwhelming superiority in terms of both manpower and material resources, while Ukraine is asking for more weapons from its Western allies.
“The situation is unstable, fighting is taking place literally at every entrance (to the city),” Anastasia Bobovnikova, spokeswoman for the Luhansk Task Force, told Ukrainian national broadcaster. “The Russians have entered from the outskirts in the east.”
“But the situation is constantly changing. Sometimes we destroy their firing positions, sometimes they destroy ours. But we are constantly regrouping and trying to regain what Russia seized”, the spokesperson added.
The Russian defence ministry, which said earlier on Monday that its forces had damaged troops and equipment near several settlements in the region, including Toretsk, had no comment.
Russian military bloggers, including a group of military analysts who run the well-known Telegram channel Rybar, said Russian troops were continuing to advance towards the city centre.
Russia, which currently controls less than a fifth of Ukrainian territory, has been advancing towards Toretsk since August, taking village after village with the help of infantry troops, reinforced using highly destructive guided bombs.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russian forces carried out 11 attacks on Toretsk and surrounding settlements on the 7th of October. Twelve more ground attacks were carried out on the night of the 8th of October.
According to the monitoring website DeepState, the settlements on the eastern outskirts of Toretsk – Pivnice, Zalizne, Druzhba and Pivdenne – are fully or almost fully in Russian hands.
With Ukraine losing more and more territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered his top leaders to do “everything possible” to reduce Moscow’s advance along the front line.
Toretsk has been a frontline city for Ukraine for a decade, as it is close to Ukrainian territories seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014. Since then, it has become Kyiv’s fortification stronghold.
For Moscow, taking the town would bring it closer to President Vladimir Putin’s goal of seizing the Donbas region.
According to Ukrainian military analysts, the fall of Toretsk would allow Moscow to block the main logistical routes linking the operational rear of the Kyiv forces in the region to the battle zone, including the main Pokrovska-Kostiantynivka road.
After Putin failed to capture Kyiv in February 2022, he shifted his focus to Ukraine’s industrial hub the eastern Donbass region. Since then, this region has become a major battleground, the scene of some of the biggest battles in Europe in a generation.
Russian forces reach another key frontline town, says Ukraine’s military
