Chasiv Yar, Ukraine's latest key stronghold claimed by Russia

Russia's announcement on Thursday (July 31, 2025) that it had captured Chasiv Yar marks yet another blow for Kyiv after months of accumulating setbacks across the sprawling front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.

It underscores systemic problems plaguing the Ukrainian army, like manpower shortages and logistical problems, that have given Russian forces the edge after three and a half years of brutal fighting.

The Ukrainian army denied that the strategic hilltop settlement had fallen to Russian forces.

If confirmed, the capture would come after many months of intensive battles in the area that have seen Russia make painstaking but incremental gains.

Russian forces had advanced along the flanks of Chasiv Yar before pushing into the city, heavily bombing Ukrainian positions until it was untenable to hold them.

Images released by the Ukrainian military earlier this year, showing rows of smouldering and skeletal Soviet-era housing blocs and lines of shredded trees, attest to the ferocity of Russia shelling of Chasiv Yar.

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The town had a population of some 12,000 people prior to the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The battle for Chasiv Yar began in earnest after May 2023, when Russian forces and units from the Wagner mercenary group captured the nearby town of Bakhmut.

That same month, AFP video journalist Arman Soldin was killed aged 32 by incoming rocket fire on the outskirts of the city.

Russian forces first crossed an important waterway in the town in 2024 and a turning point came when Ukrainian forces ceded a large industrial facility and a key defensive position in Chasiv Yar in January this year.

If confirmed, its fall will now pave the way for Russian forces to advance on remaining civilian strongholds in the eastern Donetsk region, like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The Kremlin has made the complete capture of the Donetsk region its military priority and already in late 2022 claimed that the industrial territory was part of Russia.