San Francisco Frontiers - Russia says captured key mining town of Toretsk in east Ukraine

Russian forces have been grinding forward on the battlefield for over a year, capturing dozens of mostly abandoned towns and villages despite heavy material and human losses.

Kyiv denied Russia had full control of industrial hub.

But military analysts say that if Russia took the city it would help would help Moscow further obstruct Ukrainian military supply routes across the sprawling front line.

"As a result of active offensive operations... the city of Dzerzhinsk in the Donetsk People's Republic was liberated," Moscow's defence ministry said, using a Russian name for the town and the region.

Once a bustling coal mining town, Toretsk has been decimated by fighting which has intensified since last summer.

It had a population of about 30,000 before Russia's invasion in 2022, but by July last year the number of residents had fallen by 90 percent, according to the local administration.

- 'It's just ruins' -

AFP reporters visited the town last July.

At the time only a fraction of the original population remained -- mostly pensioners unable or unwilling to leave, despite the daily bombardment and electricity and water being cut off.

The doors of houses could be seen smashed in, windows shattered, trees charred and electricity poles bent by a blast.

Drone video footage recently published by Ukrainian journalists shot over Toretsk shows the skeletal ruins of a small town subjected to eight months of systematic Russian shelling.

Smoke can be seen rising from the snow-blanketed remains of Soviet-era buildings that once lined the streets, but which have been reduced to piles of rubble.

Shortly before Russia's announcement on Friday, Ukraine's foreign ministry posted an image of destroyed buildings on social media platform X.

"This was once someone's home," it said, without commenting on whether the town had fallen under Russia's control. "A place where people lived, laughed, and built their future. Now, it's just ruins."

A press officer for the 28th brigade that has been fighting for control of Toretsk denied that Russian forces had complete control over the city.

He said that Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in the outskirts of the town and were facing down more Russian attacks.

- 'Enemy attack' -

Fighting in the nearly three-year war has shown no signs of de-escalating despite US President Donald Trump's promise to end fighting within "24 hours" once in power.

Russian strikes on the Ukrainian border region of Sumy overnight killed three people who were pulled from the rubble of a two-story residential building, prosecutors said Friday.

The attack ripped a hole dividing two sections of a Soviet-era building, official images showed.

Prosecutors said they had opened a war crimes investigation into the strike they said comprised of three guided bombs.

Sumy borders the Russian region of Kursk where Ukrainian forces launched a shock offensive six months ago. Moscow in turn has stepped up its bombardments on the industrial and farming region.

A Russian drone attack on Sumy city late last month killed at least nine people in a residential building at night.

B.Johnson--SFF