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Russian troops have not yet reached the outskirts of the embattled town of Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast, Governor Vadym Filashkin said on Sept. 25.
"There is no enemy on the outskirts of the town yet. Sabotage and reconnaissance groups are coming in, but our defenders are trying to knock them out. This means that the town is not yet captured," he said on national television.
"Our defenders are doing everything possible and impossible. They burned a lot of enemy equipment."
The front-line town lies about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of occupied Donetsk and roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the administrative border with Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
The 72nd Mechanized Brigade has defended Vuhledar for nearly two years, as Russian forces have been trying to capture the town since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Filashkin said Russian forces are trying to break through Ukraine's defense line near Vuhledar and "are advancing."
According to the crowd-sourced monitoring website DeepState, Russian forces are aiming to encircle the town.
Around 100 people remain in Vuhledar refusing to leave, Filashkin added.
Andrii Kovalenko, head of the counter-disinformation department at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said on Sept. 24 that Russia has devastated the town of Vuhledar and is attempting to advance from the flanks.
Vuhledar has withstood numerous attacks since the outbreak of the full-scale war in 2022 and has become key to Ukrainian defenses in the southern part of Donetsk Oblast.
"The loss of Vuhledar would be not only a morale blow for Ukraine since this city has resisted plenty of assaults since 2022, but also a very serious development that can potentially threaten the security of the entire southwestern portion of Donetsk Oblast not yet occupied, along with the threat to Pokrovsk's southern flank," Federico Borsari, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told the Kyiv Independent earlier this month.
Kateryna Hodunova
