Ukrainian forces withdraw from the Vugledar bastion; Ukraine capable of producing four million drones per year (952nd day of war)
Kiev says its forces have withdrawn from the city of Vugledar, a defensive stronghold in eastern Ukraine that has resisted repeated Russian attacks since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The military command in Kiev admitted that its troops left on Tuesday night, the newspaper said. “The Guardian”. Ukrainian forces retreated to preserve personnel and combat equipment, the leadership said, adding that Russian combat units attacked from three directions and were close to “surrounding” the city.
The fall of Vugledar constitutes a new boost for the Kremlin, at a time when Russian troops are advancing across the Donetsk region. In February they captured the town of Avdiivka, near the regional capital of Donetsk.
Since then, the Russian advance has swallowed towns and villages and come within 10 kilometers of the city of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub more than 50 kilometers north of Vugledar. These advances raise the possibility that Ukrainian troops will have to retreat from other urban points under pressure, including Toretsk and Selydove.
Russian Telegram channels published videos of triumphant troops waving the Russian tricolor atop destroyed buildings in Vugledar. In one of the videos, four soldiers inside a destroyed building echo imperialist phrases: “Everything will be Russia. The victory will be ours.” A hammer and sickle are also displayed in the images, evoking the city’s past. Vugledar was originally built around a mine in the mid-1960s, still in the Soviet Union. Before the war, it had a population of around 14,000. Now, it is a showcase of ruins, with destroyed buildings, scars from the attacks suffered over more than two years.
The prolonged fighting caused numerous casualties on both sides. Moscow claims to have eliminated a large number of fleeing Ukrainian soldiers, but the Institute for the Study of War assures that these statistics are not yet known.
The general picture facing Kiev is not encouraging: Russian forces are advancing in eastern Ukraine at the fastest pace in two years.
With a certain deficit of “good” news, Volodymyr Zelensky decided to announce that Ukraine can produce four million drones annually and is rapidly increasing the production of other weapons. Before a representative of dozens of foreign weapons manufacturers in Kiev, the Ukrainian President said that Ukraine had already contracted the production of 1.5 million drones this year. (Drone production was virtually non-existent in that country before the February 2022 Russian invasion.)
“In extremely difficult conditions of large-scale war, under constant Russian attacks, the Ukrainians were able to build a practically new defense industry,” praised the Ukrainian leader, according to Reuters agency.
Ukraine tripled its total weapons production in 2023, and then doubled that volume again in just eight months of this year, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at the same meeting.
Other news to highlight:
⇒ Russian President Vladimir Putin enacted two laws that allow legal proceedings to be suspended if defendants voluntarily enlist in the Army or are mobilized as reservists. The first law, approved a week ago by parliament (Duma), allows defendants whose cases are before a court of first instance to sign contracts with the Armed Forces. A second rule interrupts the criminal process and annuls precautionary measures enacted during the defendant’s military duty.
⇒ Russia carried out this Wednesday the first test of the national public warning system in anticipation of a possible Western authorization for Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets on Russian territory. “Large-scale testing of regional and municipal public warning systems was carried out in all federal regions of Russia,” the Ministry of Emergency Situations said on social media. During the test, “sirens and loudspeakers were activated, and messages were broadcast on radio and television channels”.
⇒ Russia ruled out the possibility of negotiations for a nuclear agreement with the United States, citing Washington’s position on NATO expansion. “We see no point in dialogue with Washington without respect for Russia’s fundamental interests, this is the problem of NATO’s expansion in the post-Soviet space, which poses threats to common security,” said the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry , Maria Zakharova.
