Abandoning Vuhledar to the Russian Military

"[The Russians'] main tactic was to encircle us from the flanks, and they did this constantly for six to seven months with constant serial attacks."

"Due to this tactic they managed to exhaust our resources, because we don't have as much as they have."

Arsenii Prylipka, head, 72nd Brigade press office

 

"[The fall of Vuhledar] must not be viewed as a strategic victory for Putin, or that it was inevitable." 

"It can only become a strategic victory if Putin wins the narrative battle by convincing observers that every Ukrainian town will share Vuhledar's fate if Ukraine does not surrender."

David Gioe, professor of intelligence and international security, King’s College London 

Ukrainian military evacuates civilians from Vuhledar in February 2024. National Police of Ukraine

The Ukrainian town of Vuhledar had a purpose for the Ukrainian military as an outlook promontory, a defensive stronghold, a fortress town standing on a hill with open fields surrounding it below, close to two major thoroughfares. From that stronghold Ukrainian soldiers had the opportunity to observe approaching Russian forces. With that advantage, counterattacks were coordinated. Now that military privilege of watching the enemy and planning responses accordingly falls to Russian forces, now in command of the town.

As a front-line town the hill it sits upon is strategically valuable, and the Ukrainian military fought long and hard to keep it from falling into Moscow's hands. For two years of a vicious campaign along the eastern front, Kyiv has been forced to cede several thousand square kilometres of its territory. Orders were given by Ukraine's military command to withdraw troops from Vuhledar -- once efforts to hold it were exhausted by overwhelming Russian numbers and equipment -- to "protect the military personnel and equipment".

The fall of this town that Ukraine strove so valiantly to retain could be directly attributable to the strictures placed on Kyiv by Washington in the use of the weaponry the U.S. supplies to Ukraine accompanied by strict orders that none of it can be used by Ukraine to strike the Russian interior even as Kyiv pleads for a release of those instructions to enable it to degrade the Russian military assault capabilities. 

Russia owns the skies over Ukraine, developing and advancing devastating aerial glide bomb strikes which Ukraine has no effective response to, in prevention. At the same time, a mobilization drive was unable to produce a new class of Ukrainian fighters with the capacity of holding the front line. Despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's trip to Washington last week, the Biden administration has been unmoving in its refusal to allow Kyiv the  use of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACS) to strike key targets within Russia, such as airfields.

 

A street in the town of Vugledar. Olegandros (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Even as Kyiv pleads with Washington to allow it the use of the powerful weapons in defense against Russian fighter jets dropping aerial bombs on Vuhledar, the Russian military's new tactics mounting sophisticated attacks from northern and southern flanks with the use of superior electronic warfare weaponry, plus infantrymen on motorcycles, artillery fire, drones and aerial glide bombs, Russia continues to gain momentum, even as it suffers heavy casualties.

 

Ukraine had high hopes that the green light they requested from the U.S. would come to fruition, but the Biden administration has refused. The 72nd Brigade, tasked with defending Vuhledar for the past two years has reeled under Russia's hundred aerial bombs a day. Although the bombs are Soviet-era weapons,they have been refitted with navigational technology, eroding Ukrainian defences, with month after month attacks.

The 72nd Brigade, never rotated out, given the intensity of the fight and lack of a demobilization strategy from Ukraine's military leaders, was forced by circumstances to withdraw from the ruined fortress town, which many of their comrades gave up their lives to defend. The town had a thriving pre-war population of 14,000 -- reduced to fewer than 100 people due to the heated fighting. During which time Vuhledar served as a defensive stronghold.

The ruined town of Vuhledar. National Police of Ukraine