'Everything will be Russia': eastern city of Vuhledar falls as Ukrainian forces withdraw

Ukraine has said its forces have withdrawn from the eastern city of Vuhledar, a defensive bastion that had resisted repeated Russian attacks since Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of 2022.

- Luke Harding

The military command in Kyiv said its troops left late on Tuesday. They had retreated in order to preserve personnel and combat equipment, it said, adding that Russian combat units had attacked from three directions and were close to "encircling" the city.

The fall of Vuhledar is a boost for the Kremlin and comes as Russian troops advance across the eastern Donetsk oblast. In February they captured the city of Avdiivka, outside the regional capital of Donetsk, occupied in 2014.

Since then the Russian advance has swallowed up towns and villages and come to within six miles of the city of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub 50 miles north of Vuhledar. Defence experts think Ukraine may next have to retreat from other under-pressure urban settlements, including Toretsk and Selydove.

Russian Telegram channels published video of triumphant troops waving the Russian tricolour flag over shattered buildings in Vuhledar.

In one clip, four soldiers stood inside a gutted high-rise flat and placed a flag outside. "Everything will be Russia. Victory will be ours," an officer declared.

The communist hammer and sickle was also raised. Vuhledar was originally built around a mine in the mid-1960s when it was within the Soviet Union. Before the war it had a population of about 14,000. It is now a sprawling ruin, with apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.