Russia has captured Vuhledar on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia border this week after battling for the town for 18 months.
Vuhledar sits on elevated ground near a railway line that brings in supplies from Russian-occupied Crimea. Its occupation deprives Ukrainian forces of a way to interrupt Russian supply lines.
It also gives Russia control of the adjacent H-15 highway, which may help it to “eliminate the wide Ukrainian salient in western Donetsk Oblast,” said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
Ukraine pushed Russian positions back in a crescent-shaped area by as much as 7.5km (5 miles) during a counteroffensive last year. That gain may now be imperilled. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii ordered defences strengthened in Donetsk after the loss of Vuhledar.
“The Russian seizure of Vuhledar will not on its own radically change the operational situation in western Donetsk Oblast, however, and Russian forces will likely struggle to achieve their operational objectives,” said the ISW.
Russia has struggled to make concrete gains all along the eastern front.
Since February, when it captured Avdiivka, it has pushed 35km (22 miles) west towards Pokrovsk, but Syrskii said Ukraine’s counter-invasion of Kursk in August has put a stop to that advance 10km (6 miles) shy of Pokrovsk.
About 50km (30 miles) northeast of the Pokrovsk frontline, Russian forces have been gunning for the town of Chasiv Yar all summer but have only managed to occupy an outlying eastern section so far.
A further 40km (25 miles) northeast of Chasiv Yar, Russian forces have been trying to seize Siversk without luck.
About 100km (62 miles) north of Siversk, in Kharkiv, Russia mounted a battalion-sized assault on September 26 in the direction of Kupyansk with 50 armoured vehicles and tanks. Ukraine repelled it, damaging or destroying 40 of the vehicles.
While Ukrainian defences have largely held in the face of superior Russian firepower, Russian forces have inched forward all along the front this year, capturing more than 800 sq km (310 miles) of territory.
But these tactical victories have come at enormous cost.
Ukraine’s armed forces on Sunday said 9,290 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in the week of September 22-29, an average of more than 1,300 a day, which has been typical for most of the year. Russia also lost 101 tanks and 254 armoured fighting vehicles, Ukraine said.
Al Jazeera was unable to verify the toll.
“Russian forces do not have the available manpower and materiel to continue intensified offensive efforts indefinitely,” said the ISW.
Developing Ukraine’s defence industry
Ukraine said it had eroded Russia’s enormous firepower advantage this year, and suggested it was also putting pressure on Russian manpower reserves.
“To date, the ratio of the use of artillery ammunition on the battlefield has decreased compared to the winter of 2024,” Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Ivan Havryliuk told a telethon on Tuesday. “Then the ratio was 1 to 8. Today it is 1 to 3.”
That aligned with statements from commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month, that Russia was firing 2.5 artillery shells to Ukraine’s one.
None of the officials fully explained why this was happening.
Zelenskyy attributed it to Ukraine’s counter-invasion of the Russian region of Kursk on August 6.
There could be other reasons. Ukraine suffered shell shortages in the winter of 2023-2024 as US House Republicans stalled vital military aid for six months. That aid began to flow again in May, and US President Joe Biden on September 26 said he would see it spent before year’s end.
“I have directed the Department of Defense to allocate all of its remaining security assistance funding that has been appropriated for Ukraine by the end of my term in office,” he told reporters during a visit to the White House by Zelenskyy.
That would include $5.5bn in drawdown authorities from existing stockpiles and $2.4bn under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which commissions new weapons.
Ukraine’s defence industry plays a role.
Kyiv started producing its own 155mm shells domestically this year, and last week Ukraine’s strategic industries minister Herman Smetanin said Ukraine will this year produce more artillery pieces than any other country in the world.
Ukraine’s defence industrial base had grown threefold last year, and twice over again in the first eight months of this year, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a forum for defence industries in Kyiv on Wednesday.
A fourth factor in evening out the artillery ratio could be the rate at which Ukraine is destroying Russian ammunition and artillery.
Ukraine has had considerable success in destroying Russian logistics facilities and ammunition depots this year using its domestically produced drones. Strikes on two facilities in Tver and Krasnodar Krai regions in Russia two weeks ago destroyed an estimated 32,000 tonnes of munitions.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff claimed to have struck another ammunition depot at Kotluban, in Volgrograd, though NASA satellite photography suggested the detonations took place outside the facility.
Ukrainian officials also suggested Russia was showing signs of manpower shortages.
Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told a telethon on Tuesday that Russian sailors were spotted serving in the infantry.
“This can only indicate a serious degradation and a serious shortage of personnel,” he said, “because specialists who belong to the ship’s crew need quite a long time for training.”
Ukraine’s allies announced new military aid packages, and increasingly those were taking the form not of handouts but of military-industrial collaborations.
Ukraine and Denmark on Sunday signed a defence cooperation agreement that features a new financing model. Denmark will contribute 175 million euros ($190m) towards Ukraine’s domestic arms industry, which will attract another 400 million euros ($440m) from the profits of frozen Russian state assets. The money is to develop Ukrainian attack UAVs, antitank mines and missiles.
On Tuesday Franco-German defence group KNDS announced it had opened a Kyiv subsidiary to repair and maintain Leopard tanks, Cesar guns, Gepard guns, PzH 2000 armoured howitzers and other systems.
In-country maintenance is meant to reduce turnaround times and increase available vehicles for combat operations. The company will also jointly manufacture 155mm artillery with Ukrainian industry.
Finally, the Netherlands on Saturday delivered its first eight F-16s to Ukraine, which has also received six of the aircraft from Denmark, one of which was lost in combat. Ukraine has said it needs at least 130 aircraft.
Ukraine is inviting more investment from its Western partners.
It has spent $4bn on purchases from its defence industry this year, said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov. Prime Minister Shmyhal said the budget for domestic weapons purchases would rise to $7bn next year.
One area where Ukraine has a clear advantage in both production and tactical expertise over Russia is in the use of unmanned systems. Ukraine has already produced 1.5 million drones of various types this year and aims to produce two million, compared with Russia’s plan to produce 1.4 million, said Zelenskyy this week. Ukraine has the capacity to produce four million drones per year, he said.
Ukraine has also used small drones partly to make up for its artillery deficit, to precision-drop grenades and other small munitions on Russian positions. On Wednesday, the 2nd Mechanised Battalion of the Presidential Brigade unveiled the TG-90, a heavy 2kg bomb delivered by drone inside buildings.
But Russia is relentlessly investing in its own defence industrial base as well.
On Tuesday the Duma received its draft 2025 federal budget, allocating 13.5 trillion rubles ($141.7bn) to defence and another 3.5 trillion rubles ($36.8bn) for national security, meaning 41 percent of the Russian budget is committed to defence and security next year. Health, education and other social programmes accounted for less than $70bn.
According to some observers, the vast resources Russia is allocating to its war in Ukraine do not appear to be translating into progress on the ground.
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