Russia reportedly captures key town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine

Mining town located on strategic high ground links eastern and southern fronts, acts as supply hub for both sides.

Russia’s army has reportedly taken full control of the strategic hilltop town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine.

Unconfirmed reports by pro-Russian military bloggers on Wednesday said the Ukrainian town, which occupies a key location in the Donetsk region, had fallen.

The claims come a day after the governor of Donetsk – one of the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022 despite not being in full control of its territory – reported that Russian troops had reached the centre of Vuhledar.

Russian authorities have not commented on the reports that it now controls the town. Located on strategic high ground, Vuhledar has resisted capture since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

A supply hub for both sides in the war, the town is located at the intersection of the eastern and southern fronts. Its capture has long been seen by Moscow as offering a major step towards incorporating the entire Donetsk region.

Vuhledar’s strategic importance is further heightened by its proximity to a rail line connecting Crimea – the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 – to the industrial Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and Luhansk regions, most of which Moscow controls.

While Ukrainian forces were in full control of Vuhledar, they were able to use the town as a platform to shell Russian military supply lines in the area.

A satellite view of Vuhledar in Donetsk region, Ukraine, September 21, 2022 [Reuters]

Trapped

Russian forces reached the outskirts of the town last week and intensified their offensive push in recent days, trapping Ukrainian forces and complicating supplies and troop rotation.

The military bloggers claim that the remaining Ukrainian defenders were bombarded with devastating aerial glide bombs.

Fierce fighting since 2022 has left much of the town devastated.

On Tuesday, footage posted to social media showed Russian soldiers waving a flag from atop a bombed-out multistorey building and unfurling another flag on a metal spire on a roof.

The footage matched street patterns of Vuhledar, according to the news agency Reuters.

“The enemy is already nearly in the centre of the city,” Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin told Ukrainian TV on Tuesday.

Since August, Moscow’s troops in eastern Ukraine have advanced at their fastest rate in more than two years, with little letup, despite Ukrainian forces mounting a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Source

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Al Jazeera and news agencies