According to unofficial reports, Russian troops have captured the eastern Ukrainian mining town of Wuhledar. Russian military blogs published photos in the afternoon of Russian flags on several buildings in the city, which has been a heavily fortified outpost of the Ukrainian army since 2022. Ukrainian military observers also marked Wuhledar as Russian-controlled on their maps.

The governor of the Donetsk region, Vadym Filashkin, reported at midday that Russian troops had advanced into the city center. “The fighting is taking place in the city area. Therefore, it is almost no longer possible to bring humanitarian aid there,” he told a Ukrainian news channel. Of the almost 15,000 residents before the war, 107 remained in the city.

There was initially no official confirmation from Kiev that the city had fallen. The development could be read indirectly from the situation reports of the Ukrainian General Staff. He mentioned fighting around Wuhledar in the morning, but no longer mentioned it in the afternoon report.

The Russian army had tried unsuccessfully to take the city several times, but suffered heavy losses each time. Finally, the Russian troops managed to bypass Wuhledar, which had been converted into a fortress, to the east and west and to threaten it with encirclement.

Also two villages under Russian control

At the same time, the Russian military reported the capture of two further towns. The Defense Ministry in Moscow said Vyshneve in the Kharkiv region on the border with the Luhansk region had been taken. However, the Ukrainian General Staff report said that Russian attacks in this sector were repelled. According to Russian information, the village of Krutyj Yar in the Donetsk region is under Russian control. Ukrainian military observers have been marking the place as Russian-controlled for several days, but according to the Ukrainian General Staff, fighting around the place is still ongoing.

Russian troops have been advancing in eastern Ukraine for months. The situation has deteriorated even further since the Ukrainian advance into the Russian border region of Kursk in August and the relocation of several brigades from eastern Ukraine to the new operational area. Since then, several small towns have been conquered by Russian troops. Ukraine has been fending off a Russian invasion for more than two and a half years.