{"id":80717,"date":"2025-08-20T18:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T18:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/80717\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T18:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T18:10:07","slug":"why-donetsk-matters-so-much-for-ukraines-defences-against-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/80717\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Donetsk matters so much for Ukraine’s defences against Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War, external<\/a> (ISW) describes a “fortress belt” running 50km (31 miles) through western Donetsk.<\/p>\n

“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure,” it writes.<\/p>\n

Reports from the region speak of trenches, bunkers, minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.<\/p>\n

Russian forces attacking in the direction of Pokrovsk “are engaged in an effort to seize it that would likely take several years to complete”, the ISW argues.<\/p>\n

Fortifications are certainly part of the Ukrainian defence but so is the topography.<\/p>\n

“The terrain is fairly defensible, particularly the Chasiv Yar height which has been underpinning the Ukrainian line,” Nick Reynolds, Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), tells BBC News.<\/p>\n

However, he adds: “If you look at the topography of the Donbas, eastern Ukraine in general, overall the terrain doesn’t really favour the Ukrainians.”<\/p>\n

“The city of Donetsk is high ground. It’s all downhill as you go west, which isn’t great for the Ukrainians in terms of running defensive operations. <\/p>\n

“That’s not just about drawing in for the close fight or difficulties going up and down hill, a lot of it is also about observation and thus the ability to co-ordinate artillery fires and other forms of fire support without putting drones up.<\/p>\n

“Likewise bits of high ground are better for radio wave propagation, better for co-ordination of drones.”<\/p>\n

Chasiv Yar, which the Russians recently claimed to have captured, “is one of the last bits of high ground the Ukrainians control”, he says.<\/p>\n

Intelligence via satellite imagery, whether provided by Ukraine’s international partners or commercial, is very important, Reynolds notes, “but it is not the same as being able directly to co-ordinate one’s own tactical missions”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War, external (ISW) describes a “fortress belt”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-80717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}