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Vladimir Putin’s forces have claimed a key town in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv’s troops were forced to withdraw from the area after years of fighting.
The Russian Army said it had seized Vuhledar, Donetsk, on Wednesday, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Kyiv’s eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops.
The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.
Control of the area, which lies at the intersection of the eastern and southern battlefields, is significant because it will ease Russia’s advance as it tries to pierce deeper behind the Ukrainian defensive lines.
Putin has said his primary goal is to take the whole of the Donbas region - the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk - in southeastern Ukraine.
His forces control about 80 per cent of this area, a heavy industry hub where the conflict began in 2014 after Moscow supported pro-Russian separatist forces after pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was toppled.
Key Points
- Russia claims key eastern Ukrainian town Vuhledar
- Putin’s plans to boost defence budget draw ire from some Russians
- Frontline ‘very, very difficult,’ Zelensky warns
- Putin seeks military draft of 133,000 servicemen in autumn
- Putin wants to wipe us off the map, Ukraine’s top tennis player warns
Ukraine investigating alleged killing of 16 POWs by Russian army
Ukraine said it had launched an investigation into what it said was an apparent shooting of 16 Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian soldiers.
The soldiers who were allegedly killed had surrendered on the eastern Ukrainian frontline.
“This is the largest reported case of the execution of Ukrainian POWs on the front line and yet another indication that the killing and torture of prisoners of war are not isolated incidents,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general Andriy Kostin said on X.
“This is a deliberate policy of the Russian military and political leadership.”
Moscow did not immediately comment on the accusations. The Kremlin denies that Russia commits war crimes in Ukraine.
The Ukraine prosecutor general office said on the Telegram messaging app that it was looking into a video shared on social media showing the alleged killing.
A video with grainy drone footage purported to show a group of more than ten people leaving a trench. They are lined up and then fall down after being fired upon by other, indistinct figures.
Mr Kostin said the incident took place on the Pokrovsk front, an area of intensified Russian assaults.
Alex Croft3 October 2024 07:02 1727934969Ukraine downs 78 out of 105 Russian drones overnight
The Ukrainian air force shot down 78 out of 105 Russian drones during an overnight attack on the country, it said on Telegram.
“As a result of anti-aircraft combat, 78 enemy attack UAVs of the ‘Shahed’ type were shot down in Kyiv, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kherson, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Rivne, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions,” it said.
These drones were fired from Kursk and Crimea among other Russian territories, the air force said.
It is not immediately clear if the 27 drones that were not intercepted caused any damage in Ukraine.
Arpan Rai3 October 2024 06:56 1727932688Airport in Russia's Kazan closes temporarily, RIA says
The airport in Russia’s southwestern city of Kazan is temporarily closed for flights today, the RIA news agency cited the aviation watchdog as saying.
Russia typically announces airspace closures when there are an ongoing or expected Ukrainian drone attacks.
Officials at the Russian defence ministry have not confirmed drones heading towards Moscow or Kazan.
Arpan Rai3 October 2024 06:18 1727931900Russia claims key eastern Ukrainian town
Vladimir Putin’s forces have claimed a key town in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv’s troops were forced to withdraw from the area after years of fighting.
The Russian Army said it had seized Vuhledar, Donetsk, on Wednesday, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Kyiv’s eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops.
The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.
Lavrov thanks China for ‘balanced’ position on Ukraine
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov praised China’s approach to the war in Ukraine and said both countries wanted to eliminate the problems that Moscow says lie behind the conflict.
Mr Lavrov wrote about Sino-Russia ties in an essay published in the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, marking the 75th anniversary of Russia’s diplomatic relations with communist China.
He praised China’s “balanced and consistent” approach to the war in Ukraine and said its initiatives rightly called for the elimination of its root causes, including Nato’s eastward expansion and the creation of an “anti-Russian military bridgehead in Ukraine”.
Arpan Rai3 October 2024 05:30 1727928060Former aide ‘doesn’t buy’ Trump’s claims that he can end Ukraine war
Trump’s fired military guru says he doubts the Republican nominee can end Ukraine war
‘I don’t really buy it’, said former White House national security adviser HR McMaster about his old boss’s vaunted peace plan
Io Dodds3 October 2024 05:01 1727927445Why has Ukraine pulled out of frontline town Vuhledar?
After more than two years of grinding battle, Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the frontline town of Vuhledar, military officials announced yesterday.
The loss of Vuhledar, perched atop a tactically significant hill, is a significant development on the war’s eastern frontline. But why has Ukraine yielded the territory after Vladimir Putin threw Russian reserve forces into the fight?
Ukraine’s Khortytsia ground forces formation, which commands eastern regions including Donetsk, said it was withdrawing troops from Vuhledar to “protect the military personnel and equipment.”
“In an attempt to take control of the city at any cost, [Russian] reserves were directed to carry out flanking attacks, which exhausted the defence of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As a result of the enemy’s actions, there arose a threat of encircling the city,” the statement said.
The tactical significance of the town, situated at the confluence of two major roads, is two-fold. Dominant heights and proximity to railway lines offer Moscow greater protection for their own logistics routes, and a better vantage point for attacks against Ukrainian forces and supply lines feeding the south.
Its capture is another notch in Moscow’s belt, bringing it closer to the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
Arpan Rai3 October 2024 04:50 1727925715Russia rejects nuclear talks with US over Nato expansion
Russia has dismissed the possibility of nuclear talks with the United States citing Washington’s stance on Nato expansion, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
“We see no point in dialogue with Washington without respect for Russia’s fundamental interests. First of all, this is the problem of Nato’s expansion into the post-soviet space, which poses threats to common security,” Ms Zakharova said yesterday.
A day earlier, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia will not discuss signing a new treaty with the United States to replace an agreement limiting each side’s strategic nuclear weapons that expires in 2026 as it needs to be broadened and expanded to cover other states.
Arpan Rai3 October 2024 04:21 172792479410 injured as Russian bomb hits Kharkiv apartment
At least 10 people were injured, including a three-year-old child, after a Russian guided bomb struck a five-storey apartment block in Kharkiv, local officials said.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said the bomb hit between the third and fourth floors of the building in the city’s Saltivka district.
“Several floors have been destroyed. An apartment by apartment search is under way. People could be under the rubble,” Syniehubov said in a video posted online.
Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said guided bombs had struck two city districts.
Photos posted on social media showed cars ablaze outside the apartment block and firefighters making their way through smoke rubble to get inside the building.
Arpan Rai3 October 2024 04:06 1727924520A man gets life in prison in Russia for a car bomb that wounded a writer
A man gets life in prison in Russia for a car bomb that wounded a writer
A Russian court has sentenced a man convicted over a car bombing that seriously wounded nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin to life in prison
Alex Croft3 October 2024 04:02 Newer1 / 5OlderDisclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
