Ukrainian servicemen of the 43rd Artillery Brigade fire self-propelled artillery 2S7 Pion toward Russian positions, in an undisclosed area, in the Pokrovsk district, in the eastern Donetsk region, on August 8, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. - The industrial Donbas region has long been a key prize for the Kremlin. A decade ago, Vladimir Putin fostered a rebellion by separatists who seized swathes of the industrial territory in battles that cost thousands of lives. After failing to capture the capital Kyiv with its February 2022 invasion, Russia set its sights on wresting all of Donbas, Ukraine's mining heartland. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)By Oleksandr Kozhukhar and Lidia Kelly
"The situation is unstable, fighting is taking place literally at every entrance (to the city)," Anastasiia Bobovnikova, spokesperson of the Operational Tactical Group "Luhansk" told Ukraine's national broadcaster.
"The Russians have entered the eastern outskirts of the city."
Russia, which controls now just under a fifth of Ukrainian territory, has been advancing towards Toretsk since August, taking village by village with infantry aided by the increased use of the highly destructive guided bombs.
With Ukraine now losing more and more territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered his top brass do "everything that can be done" to minimise Moscow's advance along the frontline.
For Ukraine, Toretsk has been a frontline city for 10 years now, as it is close to Ukraine's territories seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014. It has since become an anchor of Kyiv's fortifications.
For Moscow, seizing the town, known until 2016 under the Soviet name of Dzerzhinsk, after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, would bring closer President Vladimir Putin's goal of taking the Donbas region.
The fall of the hilltop Toretsk, Ukrainian military analysts say, would let Moscow obstruct key logistical routes connecting the operational rear of Kyiv forces in the area with the combat zone, including the major Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka road.
After failing to capture the capital of Kyiv when launching Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin focused on taking the old industrial heartland in Ukraine's east known as Donbas, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Donbas has since become the war's main theatre where some of biggest battles in Europe for generations have taken place.
(Reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne;Writing by Lidia Kelly, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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