The locality was a leading defensive position for the Ukrainian military in this sector and is located near a major lithium deposit.
A new advance self-proclaimed by Moscow. Russia claimed Monday, January 6, 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.
Leading defensive position
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.
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.
“Fortified area”
The loss of this city has not yet been confirmed by the Ukrainian army, which limited itself on Monday 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.
According to the Russian army, Ukrainian forces had made Kurakhové a “fortified zone with a developed network of firing positions and underground communications”.
