Explosives demolish a Russian-held building in Toretsk.
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
Shrugging off record-high losses, Russian forces are advancing along several critical axes in eastern Ukraine.
The Russians have captured Selydove, one of the towns that previously buttressed Ukrainian defenses around the fortress city of Pokrovsk. Meanwhile, accelerating Russian gains west of Donetsk city, 25 miles southeast of Pokrovsk, could result in Ukrainian forces pulling out of the town of Kurakhove, blowing up the bridges over the nearby Vovcha River and regrouping behind the rubble.
But there’s one sector where the Russians aren’t advancing. In the city of Toretsk, 30 miles east of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces are the ones advancing—albeit not very quickly and not very far.
How the Ukrainians have managed to claw back a few blocks in Toretsk, a city with a pre-war population of 35,000, says a lot about the battlefield conditions in Russia’s 32-month wider war on Ukraine. In short, it’s as much demolition as combat.
In early October, close observers of satellite imagery, drone feeds and videos posted online by front-line forces noticed something unusual happening in central Toretsk, where Ukrainian brigades and Russian regiments had been locked in brutal urban combat for weeks.
One of the open-source intelligence analysts noted a pattern of Ukrainian strikes on Russian positions in Toretsk’s central highrise district, the heart of the city.
Amid the strikes, there were signs of close combat—evidence the Ukrainians were following up their bombardment with infantry assaults. After the assaults, the bombardment died down, possibly indicating the Ukrainians had evicted local Russian forces.
Videos compiled by the Ukrainian 101st Guard Brigade in early October seem to depict the initial phase of the counterattack.
The videos show drones striking Russians hiding out in doorways, apartments and rooftops in the highrise district. One drone observed Russian infantry retreating following a failed local counterattack. The Russians fortified at least one highrise, compelling the Ukrainians to drop the entire building with explosive charges.
By last week, elements of the Russian 109th Motor Rifle Regiment were effectively trapped in the highrise district. “I’m currently in the city center in a nine-story building,” one Russian officer reported in a video he posted on social media. “Constant gunfire, and here our lads can’t even reach the nearby houses.”
The officer said he’d been injured by falling concrete—further evidence of the Ukrainians’ demolition strategy.
Flattening a city to save it is, for the Ukrainians, a Pyrrhic victory. But if destroying Toretsk is the price of partially reversing the Russian advance along that axis, the Ukrainians would gladly pay it. The alternative—another Ukrainian retreat—just allows the Russians to advance into more towns and cities.
Halting the Russians in Toretsk won’t save Kurakhove or Pokrovsk—those settlements are in entirely different sectors, tens of miles away. But how Ukrainian forces have reversed some Russian gains in Toretsk might hint at Ukrainian commanders’ thinking as they brace for the big battles to come in Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.
The plan is evident: bombard the Russians with drones, attack with infantry … and topple every building the Russians might turn into a defensive position.