Destroyed apartment buildings in Vuhledar, July 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLEG PETRASYUK
Russian forces have captured the Donetsk region town of Vuhledar, a bastion of Ukrainian defence since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour, Ukrainian war monitoring project DeepState reported on Tuesday.
Russian troops were in “all corners” of Vuhledar as of Tuesday evening, DeepState said. Throughout the day, footage had emerged on Russian pro-war Telegram channels appearing to show Russian forces waving flags from various locations around the town.
Earlier on Tuesday, Donetsk region Governor Vadym Filashkin had told Ukrainian national television that Russian soldiers had almost reached the town centre and that ongoing fighting made it impossible to deliver humanitarian aid to the 107 civilians that remained there.
A coal mining town with a pre-war population of 14,000 located around 50 km southwest of the regional capital Donetsk, Vuhledar is an important strategic location for both sides due to its position on high ground and proximity to two key battle fronts in the Donetsk region and the neighbouring Zaporizhzhia region.
Devastated in fierce battles since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the town is seen by Moscow as a crucial stepping stone to capturing the whole of the Donetsk region, which it claimed to have annexed in 2022 but whose western half remains under Ukrainian control.
Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske cited members of the country’s 72nd Mechanised Brigade defending Vuhledar who said Ukrainian units had left the town by Tuesday evening.
However, Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne said that members of the same brigade had told it that, while most of the town was under Russian control, some Ukrainian soldiers remained and the mechanised brigade had “not received any order to withdraw”.
As of Wednesday morning, neither the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine nor Russia’s Defence Ministry had commented on the reports of the town’s seizure by Russian forces.
In its update on the war in Ukraine on Tuesday evening, the Institute for the Study of War said it was “unclear” if Russia would make immediate gains beyond Vuhledar and that its capture of the town was “unlikely to fundamentally alter” Ukrainian defensive operations in the Donetsk region as Russian forces already controlled most of the roads into the town.
