Russia has taken possession of a new city in eastern Ukraine. This is Vuhledar, a town that kyiv’s troops have defended tooth and nail for more than two years as Vladimir Putin’s forces tried to seize it.
The Ukrainian army made public this Wednesday that it had ordered its last forces to withdraw from this town in the Donetsk region, now in ruins, to avoid being encircled. “The higher command authorized a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to preserve military personnel and equipment and occupy a position for further operations,” the Kórtitsia Group, a ground forces unit, said in a statement. press release. “Due to the actions of the enemy, the city was in danger of being surrounded.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday defended the Ukrainian military’s decision, calling it “completely correct.” “Lives are more important than any building,” he said at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in kyiv.
A defensive stronghold
Vuhledar was a defensive stronghold of Ukrainian forces. It is a mining town in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine with a pre-war population of around 14,000. According to the regional governor, as of Tuesday, 107 civilians remained in the city. All the children, he said, were evacuated.
Local authorities confirmed that Russian troops entered Vuhledar and almost reached the center on October 1, but added that fighting continued, making the delivery of humanitarian aid almost impossible. The governor of Donetsk, Vadym Filachkin, admitted that the situation was “extremely difficult” while videos of Russian soldiers waving their country’s flag on the roof of a building in the city flourished on social networks.
During this last assault, Russian forces had gradually surrounded the city, eventually forcing the Ukrainian retreat. Month after month, constant attacks eventually eroded the defenses. “(The Russians’) main tactic was to surround us on the flanks, and they did that constantly for six or seven months with constant air attacks; Thanks to this tactic, they managed to exhaust our resources, because we do not have as many as them,” Arsenii Prylipka, press secretary of the 72nd brigade, which defended the city, told the Associated Press.
The situation became critical when Russian troops entered the city and Ukrainian units began to withdraw without waiting for the order to withdraw, reports the BBC, which reports that there is anger among those who managed to leave with their commanders for not ordering the withdrawal. withdrawal earlier.
Withstood many attacks
The truth is that Russia has long had Vuhledar in its crosshairs and has launched numerous attacks to capture it. In 2022 and 2023, he attempted several offensives, but these were repelled by Zelensky’s units. Western experts believe that Moscow suffered considerable losses in personnel and equipment. Intense fighting devastated much of the city. The images show buildings and structures reduced to ruins and blackened, reminiscent of other Ukrainian cities devastated by the Russian offensive.
So far, the Russian assault has been unsuccessful. “The Battle of Vuhledar was extremely slow and costly for the Russians. The Ukrainians managed to hold the city for more than two and a half years. When the situation on the flanks became too difficult, the Ukrainians were able to carry out a seemingly successful withdrawal,” wrote Emil Kastehelmi, open source intelligence analyst and military history expert, on the social network X a few days ago.
The fall of Vuhledar is a reflection of the difficult situation in Ukraine after more than two and a half years of war in which Moscow has the advantage in terms of weapons and troops. It is the last major city lost after Russia’s offensive this summer along the eastern front on which kyiv ceded territory. Putin said his main goal was to capture the entire Donbass region – made up of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Vuhledar, meaning “gift of coal,” has tactical importance. It is a fortified area, located on relatively high ground – from here Ukrainian soldiers could observe approaching Russian forces from afar – and at the intersection of the eastern and southern battle fronts.
A prominent Russian war blogger, Boris Rozhin, echoed a post from another channel praising what he called an “operational, if not operational-strategic” victory due to Vuhledar’s geographic position. “The fact is that this “balcony” [seguramente en referencia a la posición elevada de Vuhledar] “It was located at the junction of the Zaporizhia and Donetsk fronts, which posed a constant threat to the group covering the outskirts of Mariupol,” he said, referring to the fallen city in southeastern Ukraine. in the hands of Putin in 2022 after an offensive which left thousands dead and injured among civilians and caused enormous damage. Another pro-Kremlin military blogger, Kotsnews, presented Vuhledar as “the last Ukrainian city south of Donetsk” that supports “all Ukrainian defense” in the west of the region.
And now what
Analysts doubt whether Russian forces will be able to continue to rapidly penetrate Ukrainian territory and make significant advances at this point, given Ukraine’s defensive positions.
In September, Federico Borsari, a researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told the Ukrainian newspaper Independent from Kyiv that the loss of Vuhledar could “threaten the security of the entire southwestern part of the Donetsk region which is not yet occupied.”
Some believe that after Vuhledar the Russians will concentrate on a town further north, Kurájove, itself located about 30 kilometers from Pokrovsk, a town of strategic importance for the logistics of the Ukrainian army in the region to which it is attached. located that Russian forces managed to approach. To support their Pokrovsk offensive, Russian forces would now have to maneuver across 30 kilometers of open terrain.
Kastehelmi maintains that the capture of Vuhledar “brings the Russians no immediate advantage nor any route of approach to Kurájove” and indicates that between the two towns there is a distance of more than 20 kilometers and numerous fortifications. “The strongest positions are located just south of Kurájove. However, I’m not sure about the quality of the fortifications in the general Vuhledar-Kurájove area. Combat usefulness depends on the level of preparation. At least there should have been enough time to build them correctly,” said the analyst.
Experts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank Washington-based experts say Russia’s capture of Vuhledar is unlikely to “fundamentally alter the course of offensive operations” in the western Donetsk region, largely because, they say, “it is not a particularly crucial logistical node and because Putin’s forces. controlled most of the main roads leading to Vuhledar before its capture, “meaning that Russian forces already had the ability to intercept Ukrainian logistics on this part of the front to some extent.”
According to these researchers, the capture of the city will not necessarily provide Russian forces with “an advantageous position to launch subsequent offensive operations” in other locations in western Donbass and they emphasize that maneuvers by Moscow’s forces may also be seen affected by the onset of autumn rains, which would make progress through the mainly rural and agricultural terrain surrounding the town difficult, as it becomes much muddy.
