Putin's troops flee the battlefield while their vehicles are destroyed (2023)

Footage from a fierce battle around Vuhledar, southwest of Donetsk, shows Russian soldiers retreating after their five vehicles were hit by Ukrainian artillery.

Russian troops were forced to flee, leaving their wounded behind after being hit by air-blast munitions.

President VolodymyrSelenskyjdescribed the situation on the frontline with heavy fighting in the Donetsk region as "acute".

Moscow-appointed leader of the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said: "The siege and subsequent liberation of this city [Vuhledar] solves many problems."

But Kyiv said the city was still disputed, with Ukrainian military spokesman Sergiy Cherevaty stressing: "There is fierce fighting there."

The Defense Ministry said on Friday that Russian forces were likely to have carried out probing attacks near Orikhiv and Vuhledar but were unlikely to have made "substantial progress".

According to satellite photos showing Putin's troops building fortifications, Russia is planning a "new preemptive strike" in Ukraine.

According to reports, the new offensive will take place before February 24, the anniversary of the invasion.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said: "Now they are preparing for maximum activation and believe that they should achieve some success by the anniversary."

"It's no secret that until February 24 they are preparing for a new wave, as they themselves say," he told Radio Svoboda.

He also said that last week the Russian military "exploited" the defense capabilities of Ukrainian troops in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Analysis by Brady Africk, an open source intelligence analyst, shows new Russian fortifications along the Luhansk front, from the Russian border to Donetsk and into Zaporizhia and Kherson.

It comes as a captured video of a lone Russian tank being destroyed by what may have been part of a mine near Donetsk.pernicious attack tactics "to disperse and divert Ukrainian forces" before their counter-offensive.

Satellite images of Moscow's new fortifications may also show that Putin is worried about a new Ukrainian counter-offensive after theModern tank messages sent from the west..

“Basically, they're trying to consolidate their gains and hold on to the parts they're holding on to,” Africk, who works at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Beast.

"I think it's definitely a message to the soldiers in Ukraine and anyone else who might be watching that they will at least try to stay."

The news follows video capturing the moment a Russian tank drives into a minefield while taking artillery fire in Ukraine.

The vehicle drives along an empty road, presumably on the outskirts of Donetsk, surrounded by hundreds of shell craters.

The footage shows an artillery shell detonating about 20 meters in front of the tank as it advances.

The tank disappears behind the cloud of smoke before running over a mine and causing another explosion.

Just a second later, another explosion occurs and a fireball erupts from the tank, forcing the soldiers to flee.

The drone footage ends with four soldiers fleeing the rubble into the crater fields next door.

The video comes asUkrainian troops engaged in a "bitter" clash with Russian militants on Friday.for control of the town of Vugledar, southwest of Donetsk, while the two sides fight on the southern front.

Both sides maintained their success in the small administrative center of apartment blocks surrounded by flat countryside not far from the strategically important town of Pavlivka.

"The siege and subsequent liberation of this city solves many problems," said Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-appointed leader of the Donetsk region.

"Vugledar could soon become a new and very important success for us," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

But Kyiv said the city, which had a population of around 15,000 before the invasion, remained controversial.

"There is fierce fighting there," Ukrainian military spokesman Sergiy Cherevaty told local media.

"For many months the army of the Russian Federation ... has been trying to achieve significant successes there," he said.

Moscow's push towards Vugledar is part of its push to take control of the entire Donetsk region, which it has already declared part of Russia.

Ukraine said this week that Russian troops had stepped up attacks in the east, particularly in Vugledar and Bakhmut.

Although the Ministry of Defense has said that it is very likely that Russia has sufferedmore than 300 casualties in an attack on troop barracks in Makiivkanear the city of Donetsk on January 1

In a rare admission, Russia's Ministry of Defense said 89 soldiers were killed in the blast that destroyed makeshift barracks at a former vocational school.

The Department of Defense estimated that more troops were likely killed or missing than wounded.

The Defense Ministry tweeted: "Russian officials likely assessed that, given the widespread criticism of the incident by Russian commanders, comment was impossible to avoid."

“The difference between the number of victims recognized by Russia and the actual likely total underscores the pervasive presence of misinformation in Russian public announcements.

"This usually comes about through a combination of deliberate lies authorized by senior executives and the delivery of inaccurate reports by younger employees eager to downplay their failings in Russia's 'blame and fire' culture."

According to an assessment by the White House National Security Council, Russia is currently using the cold winter months to regroup, retrain, rearm and prepare for the next steps in the war.

According to White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, the United States is helping Ukraine prepare for a counter-offensive against Russia.

The European Union's defense chief said yesterday that Russia is now engaged in a "war against NATO and the West" as Canada becomes the 12th country to send tanks to Ukraine.

Stefano Sannino, secretary general of the EU's External Action Service, hinted that Vladimir Putin had left his initial "special military operation" behind and "has taken the war into another phase".

Sannino spoke as Canada became the latest country to commit tanks and Poland said there would be an additional 60 to the 14 already pledged for the war effort.

Spain and Norway are expected to announce in the coming days how many Leopard 2s they will ship to Ukraine.

Belgium announced a new military aid package, pledging cash, missiles, machine guns and armored vehicles, but admitted it lacks main battle tanks to match what its NATO allies are offering.

Ukraine is also looking at Western fourth-generation fighters such as the US F-16, although that remains an unlikely prospect.

Sannino said Ukraine's allies were forced to increase and improve their military support for Kyiv in response to Moscow's shift to the west.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, he said: "I think this latest development in terms of armed supplies is just an evolution of the situation and the way Russia has started to take the war into a different phase."

He added that Russia was carrying out "indiscriminate attacks" against civilians and cities. The country was eager to gain momentum on the eastern Ukrainian battlefields before the western armored squadrons arrived.

Over the past 48 hours, Moscow forces have tried to break through the Ukrainian front lines in the Donbass region. From Thursday night until yesterday morning, Russia also sent more bombing raids on Ukrainian cities.

About 47 of the 59 missiles were intercepted, but 11 people were reportedly killed in explosions caused by Russian munitions that penetrated Ukraine's air defense systems. Russia also launched 37 airstrikes.