San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
RUSSIA FIGHTS FOR UKRAINIAN TOWN NEAR VITAL EAST-SOUTH SUPPLY LINE
Moscow, Kyiv report dozens freed in prisoner swap
Moscow is deploying thousands of soldiers to southeastern Ukraine as it renews an assault on a strategically important town that Ukrainian forces have used to harass shipments on a critical Russian supply line that runs from the eastern Donbas region to Crimea.
The town, Vuhledar, has long been in Russia’s cross hairs. It sits at the intersection of the eastern front in the Donetsk region and the southern front in the Zaporizhzhia region, close to the only rail line linking Crimea with the Donbas region. The Ukrainians have used that proximity to lob artillery shells at the trains, limiting Russia’s ability to move men and equipment between the two fronts and, ultimately, to achieve its stated aim of capturing the Donbas, which comprises the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.
After a major drive in November failed, with reportedly enormous losses, Russian commanders are once again attacking in and around Vuhledar in hopes of securing the rail line.
“This can be done in only one way — by capturing and occupying Vuhledar, which just ‘hangs’ over this railway line,” said Ivan Yakovina, a prominent Ukrainian journalist and radio host. By capturing the “seemingly small and not very significant town,” he said, “Russia would have received a wide logistical artery along the entire front line and, accordingly, the ability to quickly and massively transfer troops from one direction to another.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged in his nightly address Saturday that the situation was “very difficult,” as Russia “throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”
In addition to taking control of Donbas, Moscow is intent on keeping control over the so-called land bridge, the slice of occupied territory that connects Russia to Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow has occupied since 2014. Kyiv’s hold on Vuhledar threatens that as well.
Ukrainian officials said that they had repelled the latest assaults, but warned that Russian forces, bolstered by thousands of newly mobilized soldiers, were trying to encircle the town.
“The Russians are not trying to break through the defenses of Vuhledar, but are trying to surround the city from two sides,” the city’s deputy mayor, Maksym Verbovsky, told the Ukrainian news outlet Suspline on Friday. “They managed to advance to some nearby villages, but the Ukrainian military pushed them back to their previous positions.”
The fighting has left yet another Ukrainian city in ruins.
Vuhledar “was destroyed,” Verbovsky said. “One hundred percent of the buildings were damaged. The entire infrastructure.”
Fewer than 500 civilians and just three children remain, he said, in what had until a year ago been a densely packed industrial town of about 15,000.
Vuhledar takes its name, “gift of coal” in Ukrainian, from the mine on its outskirts. Consisting of a cluster of high-rise apartment complexes on an otherwise empty plain, the town’s elevation, exposure and tall buildings give defenders a distinct advantage.
The ill-fated November campaign was led by the Russian Pacific Fleet’s 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, with reportedly disastrous results. Mediazona, an independent Russian outlet that tracks Russians killed in battle, published an interview with a Russian marine who said that more than 200 soldiers had been killed in just three days. Reports of the defeat gained enough traction that the Kremlin felt compelled to issue a statement denying them.
On Saturday, fighting continued to rage across the eastern front, and around the embattled city of Bakhmut, which is about 60 miles from Vuhledar, while damage from Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure continued to be felt. An accident at a critical power station that had been damaged by Russian attacks in the southern city of Odesa resulted in a citywide blackout.
Despite the ongoing fighting, Russia and Ukraine said on Saturday that they had carried out another large-scale exchange of prisoners of war.
Top Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak said in a Telegram post that 116 Ukrainians were freed.
He said the released POWS include troops who held out in Mariupol during Moscow’s monthslong siege that reduced the southern port city to ruins, as well as guerrilla fighters from the Kherson region and snipers captured during the ongoing fierce battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Russian defense officials, meanwhile, announced that 63 Russian troops had returned from Ukraine following the swap, including some “special category” prisoners whose release was secured following mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
A statement issued Saturday by the Russian Defense Ministry did not provide details about these “special category” captives.