Ukraine: Kyiv denies that the Russian army is advancing in Vougledar

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Ukraine denied on Monday that Russian troops were advancing, as Moscow claims, near the town of Vougledar, a new hot spot on the front in eastern Ukraine where fighting is escalating. intensified lately.  

“Our units continue to advance (…) Units have established themselves in eastern Vougledar and work continues in the surrounding area,” said in the morning the head of the Russian occupation in the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, quoted by Russian agencies.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian army in charge of this area, Yevguen Ierin, said, he assured that the Russian attacks in the area had failed. 

According to him, the Ukrainian forces were able to repel the Russians with the help of “firearms and artillery”. 

“The enemy did not register any successes and s is folded up. We have not lost our positions,” maintained Mr. Ierin. 

For his part, Mr. Pushilin affirmed that the Ukrainian army had entrenched itself in a sector which has “a large number of industrial sites and high-rise buildings,” which facilitates defensive operations.

“We assume that the enemy will resist,” he continued.

Vougledar, a mining town which had 1,000 inhabitants before the Russian offensive, is located 150 kilometers south of Bakhmout, another hot spot on the eastern front that the Russian army has been trying to take for more than six months at the cost of heavy losses.

Denis Pushilin said on Monday that “fierce fighting” was underway near Bakhmout and that it was “too early” to talk about an encirclement of the city by Russian troops.

< p>“Fighting is underway, we are holding the lines of defense by inflicting losses on them,” another Ukrainian military spokesman, Sergei Tcherevaty, told AFP. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Bakhmut, Vougledar and other areas of the Donetsk region were under “constant Russian attacks”.

The Kremlin has vowed to conquer all of the Donetsk region after having demanded its annexation in September with three other Ukrainian regions (Lougansk, Kher sound, Zaporizhia).