the inevitable advance of Russian troops on the eastern front

Ukraine is losing ground in the east where Russian forces are concentrating their efforts. Submitted to Western military aid to have the means to resist, Ukrainian troops withdrew at the beginning of October from the town of Vouhledar, a crucial logistical node in Donbass.

The images were shown on Russian Telegram channels at the beginning of October. Two soldiers climbing the ruins of a building in Vouhledar to wave the Russian flag, marking the capture of a town where the Ukrainian military command ordered the withdrawal of its troops.

A heartbreak for the kyiv forces, who had held their position for more than two years in this small mining town in Donbass, located around fifty kilometers from Donetsk. A small town which symbolized the heroic resistance of Ukrainian troops, notably in what was the largest tank battle of the war at the beginning of 2023. A small town of which nothing, or almost nothing, remains. While around 15,000 inhabitants were recorded before the war, only 107 remained recently, diehards who lived in basements installed in houses or schools.

If Vouhledar only represents two small square kilometers, its fall is a hard blow for kyiv. The mining city represented a strategic lock and an important logistical node, at the junction of the eastern and southern fronts of Ukraine.

Not far from the large city of Donetsk, the city is close to important road axes to the west and to the north, and to a railway line which connects Crimea, annexed by Moscow. The Kremlin also made its capture an essential step in controlling the Donetsk region, of which Russia controls around 60%.

With this new advance, Moscow is tightening its grip around another major objective, Pokrovsk, further to the north, a city which is home to a considerable part of Ukraine’s steel production.

In an area where the two armies have been facing each other for years, no major breakthrough has been reported. But through repeated assaults and encirclement of villages, Russian troops are eating away, progressing by around twenty kilometers since the start of 2024. This is little compared to the means deployed and the superiority Russian human and military, but it is significant on the scale of a bogged down front.

Vladimir Putin also plans to step up the war effort. At the start of the week, he announced an increase in the defense budget by 30% for 2025, and the recruitment of more than 200,000 new soldiers to bring the army’s numbers to 1.5 million fighters, the second largest army of the world.

Human reinforcements and a financial effort which come when Ukraine remains suspended from Western aid and the result of the American presidential election in November. After 31 months of war, the renewal of troops is very difficult, and general exhaustion, at the dawn of a winter feared by the Ukrainians who suffer from repeated attacks on their electricity network. But the losses remain limited, and kyiv continues to believe in victory, as President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated a few days ago at the UN.