Russia says its forces have captured the key town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine
Ukraine is bracing for a massive Russian offensive in the key town of Chasiv Yar, military insiders have said after Moscow claimed to have captured it.
The Russian Defence Ministry claimed on Thursday to have “liberated” the town in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine which lies close to the largely obliterated Russian-held city Bakhmut.
Russia released footage of badly damaged homes in what it said was Chasiv Yar, with video showing a Russian flag among the rubble.
However, Ukraine has denied the claim, calling it “propaganda”. Its military said the battle was ongoing and that its units were “holding defence”.
The strategically significant town of Chasiv Yar has been under siege for more than a year, after Russian paratroopers arrived at the town’s eastern edge in April 2024. If Russia takes the town, it could provide a foothold for further gains in the east.
One expert said Russia could be making a concerted push to seize the territory as it comes under pressure from US President Donald Trump to agree a ceasefire.
Soldiers ready for Chasiv Yar to be stormed
DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source mapping site, showed Ukrainian forces still in control of the western and southern part of the town on Thursday morning.
One Ukrainian military insider told The i Paper said that Chasiv Yar was still under Kyiv’s control on Thursday morning but soldiers were bracing for Russians to storm the city in the coming days.
Around 20 further Russian troops arrived in the city in two armored personnel carriers on Wednesday, the insider said, though this has not been confirmed.
The insider said that the Russian arrival was the “first sign of an assault” and that it was a common tactic for Russians to attack in small groups before joining together to launch a wider offensive.
However, Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst at the Finland-based Black Bird Group monitoring group, said it was likely that Russia now controlled most of the area.
“We’ve been able to geolocate Russians to many parts of the city, to the edges of the city,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
“It’s still possible that on the furthest edges and outskirts of the city there is still some fighting going on, but it is very likely that the Russians control most of Chasiv Yar at this point,” he added.
Chasiv Yar provides key strategic foothold in east
Nick Reynolds, a land warfare researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank in London, said that Chasiv Yar was a “significant piece of high ground”.
“Chasiv Yar is the foothold that [the Russians] want, and is in many ways a central part of the Ukrainian defensive line,” he said.
“The terrain is pretty flat in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very gentle gradient, but nevertheless, elevation does matter. It gives excellent visibility of the surrounding terrain, if the weather is clear, which it usually is.
“If you’re going to use it for operating UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones], the fact that any antenna you stick up will inherently be elevated to some degree gives your electronic systems a little bit of advantage.”
Reynolds said that the elevated position also gave an improved line of sight to human observers, so drones could be diverted to areas where they were specifically needed, rather than used for routine surveillance.
But if the Russian gain were confirmed after more than a year of fighting, Reynolds said the Kremlin would have paid a high price for a “relatively small gain”.
“It’s a microcosm of that much greater question; they’re expending a huge amount of human lives and resources for very small gains,” he said.
Offensive comes amid Trump’s ceasefire pressure
Jaroslava Barbieri, a research fellow in the London think-tank Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum, said that if confirmed, the seizure of Chasiv Yar, could provide an “important strategic advantage and pave the way for further Russian advances in the Donetsk region, threatening cities like Kostyantynivka, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk”.
Barbieri suggested some of the offensive push on the town was motivated by Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire.
“The Kremlin wants to take all of the Donetsk region before the end of the summer offensive amid growing pressure from the US to reach a ceasefire,” she said.
Earlier this week, Trump said that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, had been given a deadline of ending the war in 10 or 12 days.
Last-minute territorial gains would strengthen the Kremlin’s hand at the negotiating table and increase its land grab if the war is stopped along existing battle lines, as many experts expect.
Trump previously pledged to bring about a ceasefire on “day one” of his second term in the White House.
