Russia appears to have seized a strategic Ukrainian town after almost 2 years of trying
- Russia appears to have finally seized Vuhledar, a key frontline town in eastern Ukraine.
- The town has been under attack since early in the war, with intense fighting from January 2023.
Russia appears to have gained control over a key Ukrainian frontline town, military experts said, as the town's governor described a difficult situation for Ukraine there.
Citing open sources and pro-Russian military bloggers, the Institute for the Study of War said that as of Tuesday, "Russian forces likely seized Vuhledar."
Russian forces have been seen moving freely about the town and planting flags there, the ISW reported.
Vuhledar's governor, Vadym Filashkin, told Ukrainian television on Tuesday that the situation in the town was "extremely difficult" and that "the enemy has already almost reached the center of the town," the Kyiv Post reported.
One hundred and seven of the town's civilians — out of a pre-war population of about 14,000 — remained, Filashkin said.
Russia has been fighting to seize Vuhledar — a small coal mining town in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region — in earnest since at least January 2023.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' general staff did not mention the town in its daily update of locations where fighting was taking place.
Crowd-sourced monitoring website DeepState showed Vuhledar surrounded by Russian forces on three sides as of Monday.
By Tuesday, its map shows the town as completely under Russian control.
Unable to easily resupply from any direction, Ukrainian soldiers were likely trapped before being bombarded with glide bombs, Reuters reported.
Vuhledar has been targeted by aerial bombardments from the very outset of the war, being struck by Russian cluster munition on February 24, 2022, according to Human Rights Watch.
Since then, Russia has made multiple sustained attempts to take the town. A major assault began in January 2023, at a cost of thousands of soldiers, Politico reported Ukraine's military as saying last year.
The fighting tore apart much of Russia's elite 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, considered one of the country's best.
A further assault came in June, with Russia securing a number of advances in nearby towns last month.
How strategically important Vuhledar's capture will turn out to be remains to be seen.
As a long-fought-over hotspot, Vuhledar has gained a reputation as a "fortress" in the Ukrainian military, and its loss is likely a morale blow, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The ensuing morale boost to Russia will likely come at a welcome moment in Moscow — a rare win as President Vladimir Putin increases the country's defense and security spending to 40% of the country's overall budget, the highest on record.
According to draft budget documents published earlier this week, Russia has earmarked the equivalent of $145 billion for defense spending next year, up from about $114 billion.
Some economists say the war is the only thing keeping Russia from entering an immediate recession.
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War on Tuesday cited its own earlier assessment that the seizure of Vuhledar "is unlikely to fundamentally alter the course of offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast, largely because Vuhledar is not a particularly crucial logistics node."
"It is unclear if Russian forces will make rapid gains beyond Vuhledar in the immediate future," the think tank added.
However, the town's high ground and its position at the intersection of the eastern and southern war fronts still make it a valuable target for Russia, per Reuters.
And its loss has the potential to threaten the security of all of the unoccupied southwest of the Donetsk region, Federico Borsari, a fellow in defense and security at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Kyiv Independent.
The town also sits about 35 miles south of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistics hub that Russia has kept under intense pressure throughout the summer — and whose southern flank is now even more vulnerable.