Russia claimed Monday the capture of the mining town of Kurakhové, in eastern Ukraine, after a battle of nearly three months, believing that its conquest will allow it to achieve full control of the Donetsk region “at an accelerated pace.
This announcement comes at a time when Ukrainian forces, who have been retreating for months on the eastern front, have reportedly launched a new offensive in the Russian border region of Kursk, within which they are deployed on several hundred square kilometers since August.
Each camp is trying to strengthen its positions, while conjectures have been rife for weeks about the conditions of future peace negotiations, due to the return to the White House on January 20 of Donald Trump, who promised to quickly put an end to to the conflict. The United States is the main supplier of aid to kyiv, while Moscow considers Washington its existential enemy.
On the eastern front, after months of slow but steady progress, Russian troops “completely liberated the town of Kurakhové, the largest town in the southwest of Donbass”, a vast industrial zone, the ministry announced Monday morning. Russian Defense. Kurakhové, which had around 22,000 inhabitants before the conflict, was a leading defensive position for the Ukrainian military in this sector and is located near a large deposit of lithium, a rare mineral.
This city is near a water reservoir and is home to a coal-fired power plant that was damaged by the fighting. Kurakhové is also about thirty kilometers south of Pokrovsk, an essential logistics hub for the Ukrainian military threatened by Russian soldiers, present less than six kilometers away.
“Accelerated pace”
The loss of this city has not yet been confirmed by the Ukrainian army, which on Monday limited itself to reporting “assault operations in the urban area of Kurakhové”. Its staff said on Facebook that it had “repelled 27 attacks” in this sector and that measures had been taken to “identify and destroy enemy assault groups”.
-The combat map established by the military blog DeepState, close to the Ukrainian army, however, shows the entire city under Russian control. The Russian Defense Ministry estimated that this conquest would make it possible to seize the rest of the Donetsk region “at an accelerated pace”. He also claimed the capture of the hamlet of Datchenské, just south of Pokrovsk,
According to the Russian army, Ukrainian forces had made Kurakhové a “fortified zone with a developed network of firing positions and underground communications”. Russia has accelerated its advances in eastern Ukraine, achieving its most significant gains since the first weeks of the invasion by the end of 2024. But so far it has not managed to make a major breakthrough and is suffering, according to kyiv, abysmal losses.
Attack on Kursk
And the Russian army is struggling elsewhere. In the Kursk region, after weeks of operations to drive out Ukrainian units, it announced that it was facing a counterattack. The Ukrainians have occupied a few hundred km2 there since August, despite attempts to dislodge them from Russian troops, supported in this sector by North Korean soldiers, according to kyiv. The Russian military claims to have repelled the new offensive in this region, while Ukraine has remained largely silent on the subject.
Ukraine hopes for strong decisions from Mr. Trump, who has not made concrete proposals, but also fears a decline in American support, the president-elect having repeatedly criticized the billions of dollars provided to kyiv. The Kremlin, for its part, rejected the idea of a ceasefire. He demands that Ukraine lay down its arms, cede four regions partially occupied by the Russians, in addition to Crimea annexed in 2014, and renounce joining NATO. Unacceptable conditions for kyiv.
