Russian troops on Wednesday took charge of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Russia launched its full-scale assault in 2022.
The advance of Moscow's forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia's vast superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.
Ukraine's eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops and "preserve personnel and military equipment".
The Russian defence ministry did not mention Vuhledar in its daily battlefield report.
Russian Telegram channels, however, published video of troops waving the Russian tricolour flag over shattered buildings.
The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said the last Ukrainian forces from the 72nd Mechanised Brigade, a unit famous for its resistance, had abandoned the town late on Tuesday.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia's primary tactical goal is to take the whole of the Donbas region - the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk - in southeastern Ukraine.
Russia controls about 80 per cent of the Donbas, a heavy industry hub where the conflict began in 2014 when Moscow supported pro-Russian separatist forces after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Kyiv and Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine.
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