MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday that its forces had taken control of the strategic coal-mining city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine, but Ukraine’s military denied the city had been captured and reported heavy fighting in and around it.
Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield accounts from either side.
Russia calls the city, which had a pre-war population of around 30,000 people, by its Soviet-era name of Dzerzhinsk, and says Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where it is located, is now part of Russia, a claim Kyiv rejects as absurd.
Russian forces, after initially failing to advance on the capital Kyiv after its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, are concentrating on capturing Donbas, made up of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Toretsk has been one of the focal points of the advance along with other logistical hubs like Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka to the northwest and Pokrovsk further west.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in a late evening statement, said Russian forces had launched 10 attacks on Ukrainian positions in the Toretsk sector.
“The occupiers’ main efforts in attacks were concentrated near the city of Toretsk,” it said. “Ukrainian servicemen repelled all enemy attacks.”
A spokesperson for the Khortytsya, or eastern, group of Ukrainian forces, Nazar Voloshyn, said built-up areas of the city were engulfed by fighting.
“The enemy is conducting active assault operations and pressing on in the sector with all means and forces,” Voloshyn told public broadcaster Suspilne.
“The defence forces of Ukraine are resisting the overwhelmingly superior numbers of the Russian aggressor, inflicting devastating losses in personnel and equipment.”
Russian attacks, he said, were focusing on two of the mines near the city — all of which were closed down as Moscow’s forces approached — and near a school in the town centre.
Russian forces mounted some 10 attacks every day, he said.
Ukrainian military analysts say that capturing Toretsk, which is on high ground, could allow Russian forces to further complicate logistics for Ukrainian forces in much of the east.
It would also allow them to advance to the northwest towards the regional logistics hub of Kostiantynivka, which links to several key cities.
Most of Toretsk’s civilian population has long since fled or been evacuated and many of the city’s buildings are pulverised or badly damaged.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborn/Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Ron Popeski and David Gregorio)
