Russia is quickly advancing towards the eastern town of Velyka Novosilka, according to a new assessment, as Moscow said its forces had captured two villages in eastern Ukraine on Sunday.
Moscow has made “rapid advances towards the eastern flank of Velyka Novosilka,” the British Defense Ministry said in an intelligence assessment posted to social media on Sunday.
The town sits in Ukraine’s bitterly contested Donetsk region, not far from the eastern border of the southern Zaporizhzhia region. Both regions have been annexed by Russia, although this is not internationally recognized, and Moscow does not control all of the territory in the regions.
Ukrainian forces regained territory around Velyka Novosilka during Kyiv’s counteroffensive in 2023, likely hoping to then push down towards the southern, Russian-held city of Berdiansk.
AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File
But the counteroffensive largely stalled, and Russia has been making consistent gains in the east throughout 2024, including the seizure of the former Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka in February. Even Ukraine’s cross-border push into southern Russia from early August, designed to pull resources away from the east and largely deemed quite successfully, has failed to fend off consistent Russian advances in Donetsk.
Russia has advanced at several points in Donetsk, including west of Bakhmut, and in Toretsk, a city to the southwest, as well as west of Avdiivka towards the vital defensive hub of Pokrovsk. But it has also pushed in Donetsk close to the Zaporizhzhia border, seizing the bastion village of Vuhledar in early October.
Velyka Novosilka is “now vulnerable to Russian attacks” after Ukraine retreated from Vuhledar, roughly 30 kilometers [18 miles] east of Velyka Novosilka, the British government said.
The capture of Vuhledar allowed Russia to advance more easily into “less-well-defended areas in western Donetsk,” the ministry said.
Velyka Novosilka is a “linchpin of Ukraine’s front line,” but Russian forces “are attacking behind established Ukrainian defenses and threatening the primary logistics routes to the town,” London said.
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which tracks daily changes to the front line in Ukraine, said on Tuesday that Russian forces were “coming closer to enveloping the town of Velyka Novosilka” and were putting Ukraine’s supply lines into its Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in jeopardy.
In an updated assessment published on Saturday, the ISW said Russia had continued attacks near Velyka Novosilka, but could not confirm any advances.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its troops had captured two settlements in Donetsk in the previous 24 hours.
On Friday, Moscow had said that over the past week, its forces had seized control of a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, and three Donetsk settlements.
A popular Ukrainian war-tracking blog, Deep State, has recorded several villages in Donetsk falling under Russian control in recent days, and Moscow’s advances along several chunks of the front line.
Ukrainian officials have been warning of a Russian breakthrough in the southern parts of Donetsk for many weeks. Vladyslav Voloshyn, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military’s forces in the south, said in late November that a push from Moscow would likely concentrate around Velyka Novosilka, according to comments cited by Ukrainian media.
