Russia claims it captured the destroyed town of Kurakhove in Ukraine’s Donetsk region

Russia claims its forces have captured Kurakhove in Ukraine’s Donetsk — a town that has become one of the primary focus points of Moscow forces in the past few months as they have intensified their attacks in the region.

Once home to 18,000 people, Kurakhove has been turned into rubble as Russian troops have made advances to surround and occupy what’s left of it. 

Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front line using open sources, showed most of Kurakhove under Russian control. 

The US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported overnight on Monday that Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Kurakhove itself, northwest, west, and southwest of the town. 

Kurakhove would be the first major settlement to fall into Russian hands after the Russians captured Avdiivka and Vuhledar last year.

Pushing towards Pokrovsk

Moscow forces have focused their efforts at Kurakhove over the past few months, making it one of the hottest and the most devastated sectors of the front. 

The town lies some 20 kilometres north of Russian-occupied Vuhledar and over 30 kilometres south of the key front-line town of Pokrovsk, which is undoubtedly the main focus of the Kremlin’s efforts in eastern Ukraine. 

As a massively important logistics hub for Kyiv forces in this area, Pokrovsk has been crucial to Moscow’s overall goal since 2014, which is to capture the entire Donetsk region.

Despite the calls from officials, as of mid-December, around 300,000 civilians remained in the Donetsk region, out of which 54,000 lived directly in an active warzone, according to the Donetsk Military Administration.