Ukrainian soldier and blogger Stanislav Bunyatov sharply criticized Ukraine's military leadership over the loss of the city of Ugledar, where he said wounded Ukrainian soldiers were left to be killed by the Russian army, American television reported CNN.
„You have to be an idiot to let our boys get surrounded (in Ugledar). Yet someone allowed this to happen, he stated. According to Bunyatov, the withdrawal of the ZSU was chaotic, in small groups that were exposed to fire from Russian drones, and the wounded were left “to be shot by the enemy”.
Russia captured the key eastern Ukrainian city of Ugledar, ending months of resistance and exposing Ukraine's critical vulnerability. Russian President Vladimir Putin's main goal is to take over the entire eastern Donbass region. Russia has made growing gains this year in the east, and Ugledar's loss comes just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returned from a meeting with US President Joe Biden without his main demands being met. Kiev did not receive guarantees to join NATO, and besides, it did not receive permission to attack Russian military bases with Western missiles.
Ugledar, a town built around a coal mine (hence its name), is located about 50 km south of Pokrovsk, seen for the past few months as the main target of the Russian army in the Donetsk region. Although not a transport and logistics center like Pokrovsk, Ugledar is heavily fortified and is seen as an important bastion at the intersection of Ukraine's eastern and southern fronts.
Just like Avdeevka, another strategic eastern city that fell in February, Ugledar fell victim not to Russian strategic might but to brute force attrition. For two years, Ukraine had put up a formidable defense there while Russia tried and failed several times to capture the city. In the end, however, the Russian army succeeded, exposing the ZSU's manpower and weapons problems.
The fact that Russia was able to bring in enough reserves to surround the city underscores the manpower advantage it still has four months after Ukraine's mobilization law went into effect.
The moment of Ugledar's loss is also critical – it comes less than two months after the Ukrainian army launched a surprise invasion of Russia's Kursk region. With this move, Kiev aimed to ease the pressure on Donbass, but this is not happening, on the contrary.
Just a week ago, Volodymyr Zelensky told the American television ABC that “we are closer to peace than we think”. The loss of Ugledar means that Ukraine must now fight to stop Russia from advancing westward, making the prospect of regaining territory even more remote.
The advance of the Russian army, which now controls almost a fifth of Ukrainian territory, is an illustration of Moscow's superiority in manpower and equipment, as Kiev continues to call on its Western allies to increase arms supplies.