The city of Toretsk in the Donetsk region is now almost completely occupied by the Russian invaders and the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from there is now only a matter of days. This was stated by Ukrainian military expert and former SBU officer Ivan Stupak to Radio NV. “We are losing Toretsk. I cannot say how many days are left there for the last units to leave, but the city is already almost lost“, he said.
Stupak explained that the loss of Toretsk would mean that the Russians would continue to advance towards the city of Konstantinovka in the north. As the military expert notes, the Russian invaders have approached the road connecting Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka.
The map of the Ukrainian project DeepState, which collects and analyzes information from open sources, also confirms that Toretsk is surrounded by Russian forces.
Ukrainian units are threatened with encirclement by Russian forces in one of the sectors of the front in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, a spokesman for the Armed Forces of Ukraine said earlier. He reported on national air that the situation near the town of Velika Novoselka is complex, DPA reported, BTA reported.
“There is a risk of operational encirclement“, he said, explaining that Ukrainian forces are using artillery in an attempt to prevent this.
Before the war, Velika Novoselka had a population of about 5,300 people and marks the southwesternmost point of the front in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian forces are still defending the city center. Meanwhile, authorities in the northeastern Kharkiv region have ordered the evacuation of 16 villages. Children and their families must leave the area because the Russian side has intensified shelling.
In its report on the situation yesterday afternoon, the Ukrainian General Staff listed 82 Russian attacks on all sectors of the front. More than half of them were directed against the city of Pokrovsk and its surroundings, which have been under shelling for months, the military wrote on the social network “Facebook“. The Russian army confirmed that fighting was taking place in the area. The information cannot be verified in detail.
The Russian army is advancing in the eastern industrial and mining regions of Ukraine after a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive in the fall of 2023. Since then, the Russians have captured several important cities such as Avdiivka, Ugledar and most recently Kurakhovo.