The Vouhledar fort had held out for more than two and a half years. Ukrainian forces announced on Wednesday, October 2, that they were withdrawing. The fate of the mining town in the Donetsk region, with 15,000 inhabitants before the war, massively bombed since the beginning of the war and trapped in a pincer by the enemy army, was finally decided in recent days, during a final assault of Moscow forces.
Russian authorities have not yet confirmed the capture of the city. However, on Tuesday the 1stAhem In October, the governor of the region, Vadym Filachkine, described a situation on Ukrainian television in the morning “extremely difficult” making the delivery of humanitarian aid impossible for the last approximately one hundred and seven civilians. Tuesday night, confirming the presence of Russian forces. “in every corner of the city”Analysts on the Deep State Telegram channel, close to the Ukrainian military, described the loss of this crucial logistical node for kyiv as inevitable.
The fall of Vouhledar is the latest sign of the unstoppable Russian advance in eastern Ukraine. What has long been presented as a simple “nibbling” The territory occupied by the Russians today is significant, many military observers consider. “Over the last two hundred days, the Russian army has advanced an average of 110 to 120 meters per day, but in the end this forms a strip more than 20 kilometers wide. It is not insignificant”evaluates a French military source. “This war is no longer really a high-intensity war as it was often described at the beginning. “Now it is a slow and long-intensity war.”add this same source.
The Russian advances in Ukraine follow one another and are similar, with a progression of the troops in a “pincer”: the Russian forces identify pockets of Ukrainian resistance, two separate units break the opposing lines in parallel, at the cost of numerous deaths in their ranks – , then gradually encircle kyiv’s forces before neutralizing them. “The goal of the Russians is not to conquer territory, but to destroy the enemy. “It is annihilation by fragmentation.”continues the French source. This pincer system was especially observed in Toretsk and Niou-York, two small Ukrainian towns of 5,000 and 9,000 inhabitants that fell into the hands of the Russians between August 23 and September 20.
Few forces in reserve
Facing the Russians, the Ukrainians developed a large number of defense lines with field fortifications and very narrow trenches, sometimes in a zigzag shape to complicate the enemy’s calculations, but such arrangements were not possible everywhere. Ukrainian forces usually maintain their positions at all costs by resorting to various defense methods, including the massive use of drones. But, unlike Moscow, Kyiv has few forces in reserve. The reduction of the legal age of mobilization from 27 to 25 years in spring is barely bearing fruit. And the absence of a true plan B, despite the “plan for victory” introduced by President Volodymyr Zelensky in the United States on September 22, is increasingly undermining troop morale.
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