Ukraine sacks commander as Russia advances on key logistics hub

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Ukraine’s military leadership has fired the commander who oversaw its operations in the eastern Donetsk region, where Kiev’s defenses are faltering as Russia pushes toward a key logistics hub.

A Ukrainian official confirmed to the Financial Times on Friday that Oleksandr Lutsenko has been removed from the post of commander of the Donetsk operational-tactical group.

Ukrainian forces, under the command of Lutsenko, were unable to stop the large-scale Russian offensive that took over half of the territory of London in just the past month. The official said that Lutsenko will be given another position in the army’s ground forces. He will be replaced by Brigadier General Alexander Tarnavsky.

Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s top general Alexander Sirsky said from the command center near the city of Pokrovsk that Donetsk is the heart of the eastern operation and the main logistical hub of the army, which is fighting against the “superiority” of the Russian army. . mostly in the workforce.”

“The fighting is extremely fierce,” Sirsky said. “The Russians are throwing forward all available forces, trying to break through the defenses of our troops.”

The Deep State, a Ukrainian war monitoring group close to the Defense Ministry, said Ukrainian troops defending four villages south of Pokrovsk were under threat of encirclement and Russian forces were attacking “from all sides”.

Ukraine’s biggest steelmaker Metinvest also announced the shutdown of the country’s only coking coal mine after Russian forces moved within 2km of the area near Pokrovsk, the company said in a statement.

The mine produces about half of Metinvest’s total Ukrainian coal output and is the source of the kind of coal needed to make coke, which is needed to make steel. Metinvest said it had evacuated major staff and their families.

Russian forces have recently been advancing at their fastest pace since 2022, and their current hub is Pokrovsk, as well as the key cities of Kurakhove and Velika Novosilka in the south. which is crucial for the operations of the Ukrainian army along most of the 1000 km front line.

Underscoring the dire situation facing the Ukrainian army on the eastern front, Sirsky warned that it would soon have to resort to “making non-standard decisions to increase the stability of the defense and destroy the occupiers more effectively.”

He did not elaborate on what those measures would be. But Sirsky, who engineered Kiev’s controversial invasion of Russia’s Kursk region in August and the successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv in 2022, is known for taking risks in an attempt to disrupt his enemy’s plans and shift momentum on the battlefield.

Ukraine’s biggest challenge is labor, according to analysts. His experienced troops are killed or wounded while mobilization effort largely weakened. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is about 45, with many new recruits in poor physical condition.

Russian forces significantly outnumber Ukrainian troops, despite suffering greater losses on the front line. Commanders in the Donetsk region told the FT that their soldiers were sometimes outnumbered by 8/1.

The US has urged Zelensky to lower the military’s conscription age from 25 to 18 to address a manpower shortage that has weakened its battlefield position and contributed to Russia’s huge gains.

“Let there be no speculations. our state is not going to lower the mobilization age,” Zelensky said in parliament last month.

Additional report by Henry Foy in Brussels