Russian troops reach the centre of Vuhledar; Nato’s new chief Mark Rutte voices support for Kyiv

Nato’s new chief, Mark Rutte, voiced strong support for Ukraine on Tuesday and said he was not worried about the upcoming US election as he could work with former president Donald Trump or Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Russia would not discuss signing a new treaty with the US to replace an agreement limiting each side’s strategic nuclear weapons that expires in 2026 as it needed to be broadened and expanded to cover other states, said the Kremlin on Tuesday.

Russian troops reach centre of Ukrainian bastion Vuhledar

Russian troops had reached the centre of Vuhledar, a bastion on strategic high ground in eastern Ukraine that had resisted Russian assaults since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, said the regional governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Tuesday.

Footage posted to social media showed Russian soldiers waving a flag from atop a bombed-out multistorey building and unfurling another flag on a metal spire on a roof. Reuters determined the footage matched the street patterns of Vuhledar.

Other images showed smoke rising over the ruins of the small mining town, a major battlefield where Ukrainian units had held off previous armoured Russian assaults throughout two and a half years of war.

“The enemy is already nearly in the centre of the city”, regional governor Vadym Filashkin told Ukrainian TV, describing the situation as very difficult.

Vuhledar has strategic significance because of its high ground and its location near the junction of the two main fronts, in eastern and southern Ukraine. Russian forces reached the outskirts last week and intensified their offensive push in recent days.

Andriy Nazarenko, commander of a drone battalion of the 72nd Mechanised Brigade defending the town, said they were outgunned and outmanned in Vuhledar.

“The situation in Vuhledar is very difficult, it is the hardest because assaults have been going on for more than six months and the enemy is constantly rotating its ranks with fresh, trained forces,” Nazarenko told Reuters.

Speaking from an undisclosed location during a Zoom interview, Nazarenko said his unit was doing everything possible to maintain “a window” for the infantry to be able to retreat from the town.

Since August, Moscow’s troops in eastern Ukraine have advanced at their fastest rate for more than two years, with little letup despite Ukrainian forces mounting a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Previous Russian assaults on Vuhledar had been particularly bloody, with tanks and armoured vehicles assaulting over open ground. Ukrainian military units released pictures on Tuesday of Russian tanks on fire in fields.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said that about 2,000-3,000 Russian troops were in the town, attacking from three different directions.

“We will not be able to hold on in Vuhledar in these conditions,” Kovalenko told Reuters, saying the decision to retreat from Vuhledar should be taken quickly.

Full control over Vuhledar would help Moscow’s troops to improve their logistics by using railways more actively, easing their further advance in the region and giving them positions on heights to fire artillery.

The Russian forces already relentlessly shell towns and villages across the region, said Filashkin, urging people to leave.

Filashkin said about 350,000 people remained in the government-held parts of the region. Before the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, government-held areas held about 1.9 million people. Only 107 civilians remained in Vuhledar, which had a pre-war population of about 14,000, he said.

The Donetsk region, where Russian proxy forces launched a revolt in 2014, is one of four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow claims to have annexed since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. Moscow says capturing the rest of the province is one of its principal war aims.

Ukraine drove back Russian forces from the outskirts of Kyiv and recaptured territory in major counter-offensives in 2022. But another big Ukrainian counter-offensive last year was a failure and since then Russian forces have mostly had the battlefield initiative.

New Nato boss Rutte pledges support for Ukraine

Nato’s new chief, Mark Rutte, voiced strong support for Ukraine on Tuesday and said he was not worried about the upcoming US election as he could work with former president Donald Trump or Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, took over from Jens Stoltenberg as Nato secretary-general just weeks before the 5 November US presidential vote that pits Democrat Harris against Republican Trump, who has been highly critical of Nato.

Trump has also declined to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russia’s invasion.

But Rutte played down concerns within the transatlantic alliance about the vote in Nato’s predominant power, telling reporters at Nato headquarters: “I’m not worried. I worked for four years with Donald Trump. He was the one pushing us to spend more [on defence], and he achieved — because ... we are now at a much higher spending level than we were when he took office.”

Nato estimates that 23 of its 32 members will meet its target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence this year, compared with just three countries a decade ago.

Officials say some of that is down to Trump, but much of it was propelled by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Rutte said Trump had also been right to push Nato to focus more on China. He repeated a Nato assertion that China had become a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine by supplying Russia with important technology.

Rutte also praised Harris, saying she had a “fantastic record as vice-president” and was a “highly respected leader”.

On the war in Ukraine, he avoided a direct answer when asked whether Kyiv was winning. Nato members provide the vast majority of weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukraine.

Rutte said the situation on the battlefield was “difficult” and Russia had made “limited” gains this year, but at a high cost. He said he had seen estimates that 1,000 Russian soldiers were recently being killed or wounded every day.

“We have to make sure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent, democratic nation,” he said.

Signalling continuity with Stoltenberg, Rutte said he had three main priorities: making sure Nato had the capabilities to protect against any threat, supporting Ukraine and addressing global challenges by working with partners “near and far”.

Russia says it won’t discuss new nuclear treaty with US

Russia would not discuss signing a new treaty with the US to replace an agreement limiting each side’s strategic nuclear weapons that expires in 2026 as it needed to be broadened and expanded to cover other states, said the Kremlin on Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made the comments when asked about the fate of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start, which is due to run out on 5 February 2026.

The agreement caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them. It is the last remaining pillar of nuclear arms control between the US and Russia.

President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in the treaty due to US support for Ukraine, though Moscow has kept to the warhead, missile and bomber limits imposed by the agreement, as has the US.

Citing an unidentified senior Russian source, the Izvestia newspaper reported earlier on Tuesday that Russia would not sign a new treaty with the US due to Washington’s backing for Ukraine in the war.

Peskov, when asked about the Izvestia report, said it was broadly consistent with remarks made by Putin.

“Earlier this year, he [Putin] said that in view of the changed conditions, it is virtually impossible to discuss strategic offensive weapons, arsenals and so on, without taking into account the military nuclear infrastructure in Europe, without including European states in the negotiation process and without touching on other elements of strategic security, and that Russia will not do so,” Peskov told reporters.

“We must take a sober look at the situation that has developed and, taking into account all the new aspects, organise the negotiation process. It seems to us that it would be at the very least unreasonable to insist on conducting such negotiations pretending that nothing has happened. Russia is not going to do that.”

Russia and the US together control 88% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Putin said last week that Russia was updating its policy regarding nuclear weapons and extending the list of scenarios in which it might resort to using them. DM