Russia on Friday said that its forces had taken control of the strategic coal-mining city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine, a claim Ukraine’s military denied.
Russia called the city, which had a pre-war population of around 30,000 people, by its Soviet-era name of Dzerzhinsk, and said that Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where it is located, is now part of Russia.
Media Talk Africa reports that 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, stressing that 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 said.
According to him, Russian attacks 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.
He added that Russian forces mounted some 10 attacks every day.
