Fall of Ukraine’s Vuhledar painful, but not decisive in war, say experts

Military analysts are appraising the fall of Vuhledar, a coal-mining town in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, as a painful setback for Ukrainian forces but one that is unlikely to change the course of the war.
Ukraine’s eastern military command said Wednesday that it had ordered its troops to withdraw from Vuhledar to avoid being encircled by Russian troops and to “preserve personnel and military equipment,” Reuters reported. The town had been besieged by Russian forces since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
On Thursday, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said he had ordered defenses in the Donetsk region to be strengthened.
Ukrainian and Russian experts, including those interviewed by Voice of America’s Russian Service, said that while Vuhledar’s fall would complicate the position of the Ukrainian armed forces in their fight against the Russian invasion, it would not lead to an imminent collapse of Ukraine’s defensive lines in eastern Ukraine.
Vuhledar, which had a population of about 15,000 prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion, is located on a hill, which gave Ukrainian forces a strategic advantage, allowing them to bombard Russian forces and supply lines.
“The city is located at an altitude and consists of multistory buildings. The surrounding area [of almost exclusively bare steppe] is visible from it for many kilometers,” Dmitri Kuznets, a military analyst for Meduza, an independent Russian news website, told VOA.
“In addition, observation posts and drone operators of the armed forces of Ukraine were located in high-rise buildings of neighboring mines, and the basements of high-rise buildings and mines served as a reliable shelter for infantry.”
Russian forces have suffered heavy losses of manpower and equipment during numerous assaults launched against Vuhledar since February 2022.
Still, both Russian and Ukrainian experts said that the strategic loss of Vuhledar, while painful, did not radically transform the military situation in eastern Ukraine.
On Tuesday, as Vuhledar’s fall appeared imminent, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote: “Some Russian sources expressed doubts that Russian forces will be able to rapidly advance and achieve operationally-significant breakthroughs immediately after seizing Vuhledar. Some Russian [military bloggers] noted that they do not expect the front line to collapse following the seizure of Vuhledar, citing Ukrainian defensive positions northeast of Vuhledar and the need for Russian forces to completely clear Vuhledar to make it a usable position from which they can launch future assaults.”
Oleksiy Melnyk, a military expert at the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, told VOA that Vuhledar, for Ukrainian forces, served “as an outpost in terms of destroying the offensive potential of the enemy” and that its loss “will significantly complicate Ukraine’s holding of subsequent lines and will facilitate the implementation of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s plan to completely seize the Donetsk region.”
Still, Vuhledar’s fall “should not be viewed as a collapse of the front or a turning point in the war,” he said, adding that, by withdrawing its forces from Vuhledar, Ukraine’s military “managed to gain time to consolidate” its positions in eastern Ukraine.
Melnyk said he also doubts that Russia will be able to capitalize on its military successes in the region.
“At least in the fall and winter, the pace of enemy troops’ advance will slow down. This concerns both the use of heavy equipment and the work of drones. … The use of Russian tactical aviation will also become more complicated, which will facilitate the fulfillment of Ukrainian defense tasks.”
Still, Meduza’s Kuznets said that Russian forces might be able to “take advantage of the capture of the city in their future operations,” including a potential offensive targeting Velyka Novosilka, an important fortified Ukrainian town on the boundary between the country’s Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“Russian troops are already advancing on it from the south, and may soon increase pressure from the east,” Kuznets told VOA.