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October 6, 2024 - 1:00pm
“Vuhledar” means “gift of coal” in Ukrainian, a name bestowed on the Donetsk city in 1969 to reflect its status as a mining centre. However, Vuhledar is now a gift to the Russians. This week, Ukraine’s military command admitted that it had ordered its forces to withdraw, while Moscow has confirmed that the city is now under its control.
The headline-hitting retreat will of course further sap Ukrainian morale. Moscow has taken what it once regarded as one of Ukraine’s toughest fortresses: Vuhledar’s uphill position and strong fortifications had allowed Kyiv to stubbornly defend it for over two and a half years and ensured that Russia’s two past major offensives proved humiliating setbacks accompanied by high losses of men and equipment. There is also the personal embarrassment to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that, while he was recently in America touting his “victory plan” to US officials, the signs coming from Vuhledar were only of approaching defeat.
However, the seizure of Vuhledar constitutes a greater bruising to Ukraine than merely to its President’s ego. A supply hub, the city’s position on elevated ground at the intersection of the eastern and southern fronts made it a useful vantage point from which Ukrainian forces could shell Russian military supply lines. It should also serve as a warning as Ukrainian forces brace for a battle for the highway and rail hub of Pokrovsk. Regarded by Moscow as vital for incorporating all of the Donetsk Oblast, the city of Pokrovsk possesses important industrial facilities and its seizure would severely disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front, as well as evacuations of wounded soldiers. “If we lose Pokrovsk, the entire front line will crumble”, Ukrainian military expert Mykhaylo Zhyrokhov recently warned.
As for Moscow’s current victories, Vuhledar is not in itself that valuable a gift for the Russians. Having controlled most of the main roads leading from Vuhledar for weeks, capturing the city offers Moscow no new logistical advantages. What’s more, conquering forces will now have to endure the perilous and time-consuming task of clearing Vuhledar of mines and heavy ordnance before it can become a useable position.
While Russian troops may have found it tricky getting into Vuhledar, getting out may prove difficult as well. Accessing nearby roads leading to other frontline areas will mean crossing large tracts of open fields just as the rainy season begins. Indeed, Igor Kimakovsky, Advisor to the Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, admitted this week that mud will soon render a road out of Vuhledar unusable. Even if Russian forces manage to overcome the treacherous terrain, they will have to wage further battles against such heavily fortified towns as Kostyantynivka, Selydove and Kramatorsk if they are to make progress in the north and north east.
Then there is the cost of taking Vuhledar. Moscow’s losses in the city are believed to stretch into the thousands. In contrast, Ukrainian forces reported being permitted to withdraw when they did so as to preserve men and weapons, avoiding a Russian encirclement that would have claimed many more of their soldier’s lives.
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SubscribeWay back in December of 2022 – only ten months into the Russia-Ukraine war – I wrote on my own substack about how there were three likely futures for the war.
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/putins-war-at-ten-months
1) Ukraine levereges its unexpected battlefield success, up to that point, to end the war with an honorable compromise where it only cedes territory that was full of separatists to begin with, and perhaps also gets Russia to pay an indemnity to help rebuild the country, after which both sides can claim victory to their people. (Similar to what Finland did in the 1939-40 war).
2) After the war drags on for too long and the Russian military repeatedly underperforms expectations at the cost of too many lives, Putin loses the confidence of his underlings and is overthrown in a coup. This came close to happening with the Wagner Mutiny in June of 2023, but the Putin government held on and there doesn’t seem to be much risk of it happening again. This was the only chance of getting a “victory” that would be recognized as such by the Americans.
3) After years of slow, grinding trench warfare, Russia wins the war of attrition, despite losing about twice as many men as Ukraine, simply because it has more men to lose. (The American Civil War, where the Confederates definitely had better generals and held out much longer than the North expected, but still lost in the end, is a useful comparison). The loss of Vuhledar as described in the OP is another piece of evidence that this is, in fact, the outcome we’re getting. The worst possible outcome, IMO, but also the one that the Biden Administration – more concerned with political optics than clear long-term thinking – has been mindlessly steering Ukraine toward this whole time.
History Legends goes through the best available information on casualties in a div > p > a”>YT video last year. To make it short: there is no evidence that RU is taking more casualties than UA. The troop rotations suggest that in fact, they are not taking as many. This is part of why the advances have been so slow and painful. The RU prefer to grind down with artillery, and frequently rotate out tired frontline soldiers, rather than pressing attacks in a costly manner.
The better analogy is like someone who wants to slowly take a plaster off, one painful hair at a time, rather than ripping it off all at once.
Their recruiting tactics suggest otherwise. In virtually no modern military action will the attacker take fewer casualties, unless they manage to break through and encircle their enemies.
History Legends talks about this fallacy. Watch the video.
If you are talking about recruiting tactics, what about the desperate Ukrainian press-ganging of civilians? These poor, middle aged, half-trained wretches are being butchered wholesale at the front.
Its not over yet but with the US losing interest and Scholz wanting peace talks let’s see what happens after 5th November.
The US never cared about Ukraine winning the war. The whole point was to trap Russia into a long conflict that would wear down its military and create dissent among its people. Toward that end the US was willing to sacrifice an unlimited number of Ukrainian lives and remains willing to sacrifice more. Everything is going according to the US plan, except that the Russian military is stronger than before and the Russian people energetically support their government’s handling of the war, outside of those who want Russia to pursue it more aggressively.
Bakhmut holds !!!
Vuhledar holds !!!
Pokrovsk holds LOL
And on the Russians roll to the next town
Two years and probably 50,000 casualties to take one town, with no sign of any ability to conduct mobile warfare. At that rate the last military age Russian male should be hit about 30 miles short of Kyiv. Even if the Russian end up getting all of Donetsk and Luhansk, the war has be a terrible strategic defeat.
So…Russia gets what it wants, and it’s a strategic defeat?
As opposed to the West’s “whatever it takes”…”oops, we’ve run out of whatever it takes, not to mention interest in your problems”…
Yeh, right…
What Russia wanted was a quick occupation of Ukraine and the establishment of a puppet regime that would add to its strength. Instead their professional army has been gutted, their equipment revealed to be trash (devastating their earnings from international arm sales) and they will probably only acquire the other half of two provinces they already partially occupied. That land will be completely devastated and of no economic value.
In exchange for that they have driven Sweden and Finland into NATO, spurred a huge arms build up in Poland, and now have an 800 mile border with NATO. Meanwhile, they will still have an armed and bitter Ukraine on their flank.
Russia’s strategic position is far worse today, much like France and the UK were in a far worse strategic position after “winning” WW1 than they were before.
So you call it a victory for Ukraine?
No, it has been a devastating slog, but survival is better than being conquered. This is not a binary. Some wars have no winners. See WW1, 1914-18. And some draws turn into wins, see Korea, South 1953-present.
That land will still be worth as much as the raw materials in the ground, including the lithium and coal stored inside it. It is hard to know the amounts in each city, but before the war started, Ukraine had some of the richest lithium and coal deposits on the planet.
You might be right Arthur, but the thing is its very hard to figure out exactly whats going on, I don’t believe the numbers from either side
I think the Russian plan is to keep going until the Ukrainian army breaks or collapses, after that the Russians can take what they want, at that point who could stop them. Will that plan work, don’t know, time will tell I suppose
Modern Armies can take a hell of a beating before collapsing. Look at WW1 and WW2 for the level of casualties required.
“A supply hub, the city’s position on elevated ground at the intersection of the eastern and southern fronts made it a useful vantage point from which Ukrainian forces could div > p > a”>shell Russian military supply lines”
Half of this statement is true. Vuhledar gave the UAs an artillery firing position on the Pavlika-Mihiliska road, greatly frustrating Russian troop movements along that portion of the front.
But it was not a ‘supply hub’. It was more of a fortified outpost, with small north-south roads bringing supplies from the actual ‘supply hub’ of Bohoyavlenka, to what was effectively a brigade-strength garrison (72nd ‘mechanised’).
It’s a small point, but journalists should really be careful about their use of language. Don’t insert words into articles you don’t understand to pretend like you’re more of an expert than you are.