By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian troops have taken complete control of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a bastion that had resisted intense Russian attacks since the beginning of the 2022 war, Russian war bloggers and media said on Wednesday.
Russian Telegram channels published video of troops waving the Russian tricolour 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.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said that Vuhledar had finally fallen after the last Ukrainian forces from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, a unit famous for its resistance, abandoned the town late on Tuesday.
The SHOT Telegram channel and pro-Russian war bloggers confirmed that Vuhledar was under total Russian control, though there was no official response from either the Russian or Ukrainian militaries.
On Tuesday, a regional Ukrainian official said Russian troops had reached the centre of Vuhledar, a coal mining town located on strategic high ground.
Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have advanced at their fastest rate in two years since August, even though a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region sought to force Moscow to divert troops.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s primary tactical goal is to take the whole of the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine. Russia controls just under a fifth of the country as a whole, including about 80% of the Donbas.
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 1,000-km (620-mile) front involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
BASTION FALLS
Despite the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk in early August, Russian forces have been pushing westwards at key points along some 150 km (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 encircled the hilltop town of Vuhledar, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Pokrovsk, essentially forcing Ukrainian forces to make a choice: retreat or face certain capture.
Russia has increasingly 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. Both sides said the other paid a high human price for the town.
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 30 km (20 miles) to the west.
Vuhledar also sits close to a railway line connecting Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, to Ukraine’s industrialised Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and the eastern region of Luhansk.
Russian forces currently control 98.5% of the Luhansk region and 60% of the Donetsk region.
(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.