Russian troops have taken full control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Vuhledar, which has resisted intense Russian attacks since the start of the 2022 war, Russian war bloggers and media said on Wednesday the 2nd of October, publishing videos of Russian troops waving the Russian flag over a destroyed building, report Reuters and the BBC.
The town, which had more than 14 000 inhabitants before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings destroyed.
Occupied Vuhledar, or what’s left of it. pic.twitter.com/okLFvjdHCj
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 2, 2024
The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported that Vuhledar had finally fallen after the last Ukrainian forces from the 72nd Mechanised Brigade, known for its resistance, left the town on Tuesday evening.
The Telegram channel SHOT and pro-Russian war bloggers confirmed that Vuhledar is under full Russian control, although there have been no official replies from either the Russian or the Ukrainian military.
Footage posted on social media shows Russian soldiers waving a flag from a bombed high-rise building.
Confirmed. Russia has fully occupied Vuhledar. Russian units from the 36th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade raised their flag over the Vuhledar City Council. Ukrainian forces have withdrawn to Bohoyavlenka, north of Vuhledar. pic.twitter.com/q2OZueh9Gc
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 1, 2024
Analysts from DeepState, a group monitoring frontline events in Ukraine, also reported that Russian forces had captured the city as well as soldiers from the 72nd Brigade claimed that their troops had retreated from the city.
Vadim Filashkin, the governor of Donetsk region, which is part of the historical territory of Donbas, told Ukrainian television on Tuesday that Russian troops had reached the centre of Vuhledar.
Earlier, Andriy Nazarenko, commander of the drone battalion of the 72nd mechanised brigade, said that they lacked weapons and combat forces in Vuhledar.
“The situation in Vuhledar is very complicated, it is the most complicated because the attacks have been going on for more than six months and the enemy is constantly replenishing its ranks with fresh, trained forces,” Nazarenko told Reuters.
Since August, Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have advanced at their fastest pace in two years, although Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region was an attempt to force Moscow to redeploy troops.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said that there were around 2 000 to 3 000 Russian troops in the city, attacking from three different directions.
President Vladimir Putin has stated that Russia’s main tactical objective is to capture the entire Donbas region in south-eastern Ukraine. Russia controls less than a fifth of the entire territory of the country, including about 80% of the Donbass region.
Despite the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk in early August, Russian forces have advanced westwards at key points along a front of about 150km in the Donetsk region, with one of the main targets being Pokrovsk, a logistical hub.
On the 17th of September, they captured Ukrainsk and then laid siege to the mountainous town of Vuhledar, located some 80km south of Pokrovsk, forcing the Ukrainian forces to choose between retreating or being captured.
Russia has increasingly used pincer tactics to encircle and then crush Ukrainian strongholds. Pictures from the area showed intensive bombardment of the city using artillery and glide bombs.
Control of Vuhledar is important because it will facilitate Russia’s advance as it seeks to penetrate deeper behind Ukrainian defensive lines.
Russian bloggers said that Russia might now try to push towards Velyka Novosilka, which lies just over 30km to the west.
Vuhledar is also close to a railway line that links Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, with Ukraine’s industrialised Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and the eastern region of Luhansk.
Russian forces currently control 98.5% of the Luhansk region and 60% of the Donetsk region.