Russia captures Vuhledar from Ukraine, a big strategic gain for Putin

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian troops on Wednesday took charge of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Russia launched its full-scale assault in 2022.

The advance of Moscow’s forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia’s vast superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.

Ukraine’s eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops and “preserve personnel and military equipment.”

The 72nd Mechanized Brigade, the last unit defending the city, posted photos of wounded soldiers to Facebook with the message: “These are very hard days. Very!”

The Russian defense ministry did not mention Vuhledar in its daily battlefield report.

Russian Telegram channels, however, published video of troops waving the Russian tricolor flag over shattered buildings.

The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s primary tactical goal is to take the whole of the Donbas region — the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk — in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia controls about 80% of the Donbas, a heavy industry hub where the armed conflict began in 2014 when Moscow-coordinated pro-Russian “separatist” forces took control over part of the region after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Kyiv and Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine.

Since Russia sent its army into Ukraine in February 2022, the war has largely been a story of grinding artillery and drone strikes along a heavily fortified 620-mile front involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

But in August the battlefield became much more dynamic: Ukraine smashed through the border in Russia’s Kursk region in a bid to divert Russian forces, and Russian troops began advancing faster than before in eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces have been pushing westwards at key points along some 95 miles of the front in the Donetsk region, with the logistics hub of Pokrovsk also a key target.

They captured Ukrainsk on Sept. 17 and then began encircling Vuhledar, about 50 miles south of Pokrovsk.

Russia has been using pincer tactics to trap and then constrict Ukrainian strongholds. Images from the area showed intense bombardment of the town with artillery and aerial glide bombs.

Neither side discloses losses, and each said the other had paid a high human price for the town.

“Having suffered numerous losses as a result of prolonged battles, the enemy did not stop trying to capture Vuhledar. In an effort to take control of the city at any cost, he managed to direct the reserves to carry out flanking attacks, which exhausted the defense of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As a result of the enemy’s actions, there was a risk of the encirclement of the city,” Ukraine’s eastern command said early Wednesday.

“The higher command has given permission to carry out a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to preserve personnel and combat equipment, to take up positions for further actions.”

Control of Vuhledar, which lies at the intersection of the eastern and southern battlefields, is significant because it will ease Russia’s advance as it tries to pierce deeper behind the Ukrainian defensive lines.

Russian bloggers said Russia could now try to push towards Velyka Novosilka, just over 20 miles to the west.

Vuhledar also sits close to a railway line connecting Crimea to the Donbas region.

Russian forces currently control 98.5% of the Luhansk region and 60% of the Donetsk region.