Ukrainian forces announce withdrawal from Vuhledar

Ukrainian forces have announced a withdrawal from the eastern town of Vuhledar after more than two years of fighting against an encroaching Russian army.

A Ukrainian military force in the eastern Donetsk region, Khortytsia, said in a Telegram post Wednesday the higher military command ordered forces to withdraw to “preserve personnel and combat equipment” and “take a position for further actions.”

“In an effort to take control of the city at any cost, [Russia] managed to direct the reserves to carry out flanking attacks, which exhausted the defense of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” it said in the statement. “As a result of the enemy’s actions, the encirclement of the city was threatened.”

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also reported Tuesday that Russian forces likely captured the town and that geolocated footage shows some troops were planting flags in Vuhledar.

“Russia’s 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,”the ISW wrote in a post on the social platform X.

Vuhledar, in the southeastern Donetsk region, is about 18 miles from the town of Pokrovsk, which Russia has been inching toward for weeks. If Pokrovsk falls, Russian forces will have seized a critical rail hub and supply station used by Ukrainian troops, potentially endangering their ability to reinforce defensive lines. 

The Russian pressure campaign has continued across the 600-mile front, but particularly in the Donetsk region as the Kremlin aims to capture the entire Donbass, or the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine made up of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russia has continued its push despite an Aug. 6 surprise Ukrainian offensive into the Russian region of Kursk, which Kyiv hatched in part to divert troops from the eastern front lines.

While there has been some diversion, according to Ukraine, the hoped-for impact of a changing dynamic on the eastern battlefield has not been realized. Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised the Kursk attack would not hamper Russia’s fight in Ukraine. Still, Ukraine continues to occupy Kursk.

Russian military bloggers wrote that troops have now begun advancing north of Vuhledar and are continuing to make progress in the area.

Fighting began in Vuhledar in 2022 and became more intense in early 2023 as Russian forces concentrated attacks in the Donetsk region.