KYIV – Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on Friday that its forces had captured the mining town of Toretsk in their latest breakthrough in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where Ukrainian defenses are creaking.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately make any comments on the Russian claim.

Russia’s much-larger army has conducted a sustained yearlong campaign along the eastern front, gradually loosening the short-handed and weary Ukrainian forces’ grip on its strongholds as the war approaches its fourth year later this month.

The losses coincide with uncertainty over whether the United States will keep providing vital military aid. President Donald Trump, who says he is making American interests his priority, has said he wants to end the war, although his plans for securing peace are unclear.

Russia’s claimed fall of Toretsk, if confirmed, would advance its sweep across the Donetsk, which has cost Moscow heavily in troops and armor but has paid dividends for the Kremlin. In the offensive, Russian forces crush settlements with the brute force of 3,000-pound (1,300-kilo) glide bombs, artillery, missiles and drones, then send in infantry units to attack the exposed defenders.

So far this year, Kurakhove was the first significant town to capitulate under Russia’s onslaught, after Russian forces captured Avdiivka and Vuhledar last year. Russian forces last month also took Velyka Novosilka, in the same area.

The towns were part of a belt of Ukrainian defenses in the east. Russia’s other targets are the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk and the strategically important city of Chasiv Yar.

Russia seeks to take control of all parts of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk, which together make up Ukraine’s Donbas industrial region.

Russia accelerated its destruction of Ukraine’s front-line cities in 2024 to a scale previously unseen in the war, using the glide bombs and an expanding network of airstrips, according to an Associated Press analysis last year of drone footage, satellite imagery, Ukrainian documents and Russian photos.

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