KYIV (Reuters) – Russian troops have reached the centre of Vuhledar, a bastion on strategic high ground in eastern Ukraine that has resisted Russian assaults since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, the regional governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said on Tuesday.
Vadym Filashkin, the governor, said the situation in Vuhledar was extremely difficult.
“The enemy is already nearly in the centre of the city,” Filashkin told Ukrainian TV.
Russian forces reached the outskirts of the small mining town last week and intensified their offensive push in recent days.
Moscow’s troops in eastern Ukraine advanced at their fastest rate in two years in August, according to multiple open-source maps. Their relentless advance in the Ukrainian east comes despite Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
Oleksandr Musienko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said that the Russian advance in Vuhledar came at a high cost in casualties for Moscow but would complicate Ukraine’s position in the east.
“Its defence was key to disrupting the enemy’s faster and steeper advance in the Donetsk region. If it weren’t for Vuhledar, if it weren’t for our units there, I think it would be much more difficult now, for example, in the Kurakhiv direction,” Musienko said.
Ukrainian military analysts said that full control over Vuhledar would help Moscow’s troops in their further advance in the region as they would control heights, key for their artillery fire.
The Russian forces already relentlessly shell towns and villages across the region, Filashkin said.
“It is very dangerous to stay in the region, and I stress once more the need for people to leave,” he said.
Filashkin said that about 350,000 people still remained in the government-held parts of the region. Before the start of the invasion, the government-held areas held about 1.9 million people.
Only 107 civilians remained in Vuhledar, which had a pre-war population of about 14,000, Filashkin said.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash; Editing by Peter Graff)
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