Ukraine's fortress cities under fire as Russia bids to seize rest of Donbas
Kramatorsk and Slovyansk are now the main focus of Russian ground assaults, and residents are being told to leave.
Ukraine’s fortress cities come under attack as Russia seeks to take the rest of Donbas
The situation in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk has become so perilous that police are now saying civilians should leave. These two adjacent cities are the largest still fully under Ukrainian control in eastern Donbas.
In the hardest-hit areas, forced evacuations of families with children have already started, according to Pavlo Dyachenko of Donetsk police.
“This is the only way to save your life,” he says, because security has worsened so dramatically.
“If you take Slovyansk, it used to be hit by glide bombs roughly once a week, but now it’s almost every day.”
Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka, farther south, are part of what Ukraine calls its “fortress belt” — a network of heavily fortified defensive lines in the east.
But reports say Kostyantynivka now has only a limited Ukrainian military presence, while Russia says it is in full control there.
Taking all of Donbas, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, is a central Russian goal. Moscow has repeatedly invoked the “liberation” and “protection” of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas as a reason for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russian forces already hold nearly all of Luhansk region and now control almost 80% of Donetsk region as well, where all three fortress cities are located.
For several months, the area around Kramatorsk and Slovyansk has been the main target of Russian ground attacks. If captured, the cities could make it much easier for Russia to push westward.
Both cities are now under heavy drone and bomb strikes.
Many civilians have already fled, and major streets are now covered with anti-drone nets, says Viktor Makurin, a volunteer from London.
“There are often [remote-controlled] FPV drones in the air, you can hear them through the window. Driving around the city is lethally dangerous. There are drones lying in ambush on the roads, too,” he told the BBC.
“You can always hear explosions in the background, plus there are mobile groups firing at drones.”
During the summer, the number of civilians wounded by Russian attacks on the two cities rose from 70 in June to 212 in August, Ukrainian police say.
Sixteen people were killed in June, 20 in July and 15 in August.
Dyachenko says residential buildings are being hit as well as infrastructure, causing “very significant destruction”.
According to data published by Ukrainian police and examined by the BBC, the number of glide bombs launched by Russia rose from 40 in June to 109 in July and 92 in August.
One morning two weeks ago, on 25 August, nine glide bombs struck Kramatorsk. Seven hit civilian apartment blocks, wounding 24 people, including a two-month-old baby, Ukrainian police say.
Two days later, the city was hit again, this time by seven glide bombs, and five bombs struck Slovyansk.
Equipped with winglets so they can glide toward their target instead of simply dropping, glide bombs are regarded as one of the most effective and deadly weapons in Russia’s arsenal.
They usually weigh 250 or 500 kg, though Russia has also used bombs weighing 1,500 kg.
“The devastation they cause is simply incredible,” says Dyachenko.
“Glide bombs are the big fear,” another British volunteer, John Auckland Abbey, wrote on social media.
“They are silent killers, and when you’ve been abruptly woken by one exploding, you know at least another one will follow. The question you ask yourself as you lie very still in the dark is: will the next one be closer?”
Kramatorsk is now the location of the Donetsk regional administration headquarters. The regional capital used to be Donetsk, until Russian-backed separatists captured it in 2014.
What happens to the parts of Donbas still under Ukrainian control was reportedly a major topic when US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last weekend after their talks with Putin.
Witkoff has previously seemed to support Russian claims to the region, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is refusing to withdraw troops from it.
He says Putin has given his generals until the end of the year to finish occupying Donbas.
“Putin’s primary objective on the front line remains the same: Kostyantynivka-Slovyansk,” Zelensky told journalists last month.
Under growing military pressure, the Ukrainian leader has formed two new taskforces led by experienced generals, Andriy Biletsky and Denys Prokopenko, to defend the part of Donbas still held by Ukraine.
“There isn’t just a battle for Donbas there,” one unnamed Ukrainian general has said.
“What is probably the main battle of this year and the next is now unfolding.”