Russia tightens grip on Donetsk region as it captures key Ukrainian town

Russia’s army fully occupied the critical Ukrainian town of Vuhledar on Wednesday, after more than two years pressing to capture the Donetsk region stronghold.

 “To take control of the city at any cost, Russians managed to direct the reserves to carry out flank attacks, which exhausted the defense of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were under the risk of encirclement,” the Ukrainian command said in a statement.

“The higher command has permitted to carry out a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar to preserve personnel’s lives and combat equipment,” the command added.

Vuhledar is a coal mining town located at a strategic height, which allowed Ukrainian forces to successfully defend it for more than two years until Russian troops destroyed most of it and managed to go around from the southern and western flanks.

Russian forces entered Vuhledar on Sept. 30, with Donetsk regional Governor Vadym Filashkin reporting on battles taking place in the town, where around 100 out of 14,000 civilians remain as of Tuesday.

Locals are surviving mostly by hiding in the basements. Ukraine previously provided humanitarian aid for them, but the Russian advance in recent days has “made it hardly possible,” the governor added.

Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, said that after Vuhledar the Russians will concentrate on Kurakhove, which opens another entryway for them to attack Pokrovsk, a strategically important city for the Ukrainian army’s logistics in the region.

“Little by little, the Russians are pushing us out of the Donetsk region. So later Putin can say that the goals of the war have been achieved. In the process, the Russians are trying to convert local successes on the battlefield into tools for undermining sentiments in the middle of Ukraine and abroad,” Bielieskov told POLITICO.