Russia says captured key mining town of Toretsk in east Ukraine

AFP | Moscow

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Russia said yesterday its forces had seized the mining town of Toretsk in east Ukraine after months of heavy fighting, the biggest town Moscow claims to have taken in recent months.

Russian forces have been grinding forward on the battlefield for over a year, capturing dozens of mostly abandoned towns and villages despite heavy material and human losses.

Kyiv denied Russia had full control of industrial hub. But military analysts say that if Russia took the city it would help would help Moscow further obstruct Ukrainian military supply routes across the sprawling front line.

“As a result of active offensive operations... the city of Dzerzhinsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic was liberated,” Moscow’s defence ministry said, using a Russian name for the town and the region.

Once a bustling coal mining town, Toretsk has been decimated by fighting which has intensified since last summer.

It had a population of about 30,000 before Russia’s invasion in 2022, but by July last year the number of residents had fallen by 90 percent, according to the local administration.

Reporters visited the town last July. At the time only a fraction of the original population remained.

The doors of houses could be seen smashed in, windows shattered, trees charred and electricity poles bent by a blast.

Drone video footage recently published by Ukrainian journalists shot over Toretsk shows the skeletal ruins of a small town subjected to eight months of systematic Russian shelling.

Smoke can be seen rising from the snow-blanketed remains of Soviet-era buildings that once lined the streets, but which have been reduced to piles of rubble.

Shortly before Russia’s announcement on Friday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted an image of destroyed buildings on social media platform X.

“This was once someone’s home,” it said, without commenting on whether the town had fallen under Russia’s control. “A place where people lived, laughed, and built their future. Now, it’s just ruins.”

A press officer for the 28th brigade that has been fighting for control of Toretsk denied that Russian forces had complete control over the city.

He said that Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in the outskirts of the town and were facing down more Russian attacks.