Ukraine seeks to bolster defences in the east after Vuhledar falls

Ukraine's armed forces commander General Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Thursday he had ordered defences to be strengthened in the eastern Donetsk region, a day after Kyiv forces announced they had withdrawn from the town of Vuhledar.

President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the loss of Vuhledar, saying moving troops out and preserving lives was the critical issue.

The Russia-appointed governor of Donetsk region said both sides had recognised the strategic value of the town, adding that reconstruction efforts there would take time.

Russian troops are steadily inching forward in different sectors in eastern Ukraine despite Kyiv's surprise incursion into Russia's western Kursk region in August that Ukraine hoped would slow the advances.

Syrskyi said on social media he was working on "one of the hottest front sectors" with the 25th Sicheslav Airborne Brigade.

He gave no details on the location but the brigade operates in the Pokrovsk front, an area of intensified Russian assaults.

"While working in the brigade, I made a number of decisions aimed at strengthening stability and effectiveness of our defence," Syrskyi said.

More than two-and-a-half years into the full-scale war, Ukrainian troops are on the defensive. The Ukrainian military announced on Wednesday it was pulling troops out of the coal-mining town Vuhledar, a hilltop bastion that had resisted intense attacks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Ukraine's eastern military command said on Wednesday it had ordered a pullback from Vuhledar to avoid being encircled by Russian troops and to "preserve personnel and military equipment". Russia has widely used the tactic to secure control of other Ukrainian settlements.

"Lives (of soldiers) need to be saved because they are our people, they are citizens of Ukraine," said Zelensky, addressing reporters alongside new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. "Therefore it is very right that they can retreat and save themselves."

Moscow's forces now control just under a fifth of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow's primary tactical goal is to take all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Russian forces have been pushing westwards at key points along some 150 km (95 miles) of the front in Donetsk, with the logistics hub of Pokrovsk a key target.

In a late evening report on the battlefield situation, Ukraine's General Staff said the Pokrovsk sector remained the theatre of the fiercest fighting. It said Russian forces had launched 28 attacks on Ukrainian forces in that sector and a further 23 in the nearby Kurakove sector.