Key town liberated, nuclear plant scare, ammo train on fire: The latest from the Ukraine conflict

This week, the protracted battle for the Donbass city of Ugledar was resolved with a Russian victory, as Ukrainian forces were allowed to retreat by their commanders.

Moscow dealt a blow to Kiev’s logistics when it destroyed a train full of munitions in Nikolaev Region.

There was also a drone incident involving the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, as well as dubious claims that Moscow had used its most powerful conventional air bomb.

Volchansk liberated

On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the liberation of Ugledar, a settlement located around 15 miles (25km) northwest from Volnovakha, the district capital. Mostly composed of high-rise buildings erected on a hill, it served as a fortress for Ukrainian troops for years.

The development was widely expected since last week, as reports about the desperate situation of the Ukrainian garrison were widespread. Kiev’s military said on Wednesday that defenders had been granted permission to withdraw due to the threat of encirclement.

A video circulated on Tuesday showing Russian soldiers placing the national flag on the roof of the damaged headquarters of the local administration – and apparently spending a lot of time in the open without fear of getting shot or hit with a kamikaze drone.

According to media reports, the Ukrainian retreat was long-overdue, chaotic, and costly. There was speculation that troops had been told to hold on to Ugledar at least for as long as Vladimir Zelensky was on his visit to the US last week. The Ukrainian leader was promoting his ‘victory plan’, which requires more Western arms and the go-ahead from his country’s backers to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western long-range weapons.

Zelensky addressed the loss of Ugledar on Thursday in Kiev during a joint press conference with NATO’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, declaring that Ukraine “cannot stop Russia” unless it gets the requested arms and is allowed use them as it sees fit.

Ugledar was part of a major Ukrainian defense line in Donbass stretching from Toretsk in the northeast through Avdeevka and Maryinka all the way to Zaporozhye in the west. Russia has captured most of those strategic points, with intensive fighting for Toretsk underway.

Kursk incursion

On Thursday, the governor of Russia’s Kursk Region, Aleksey Smirnov, reported that a Ukrainian fixed-wing drone had landed in the city of Kurchatov, which hosts the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. The official said it had been downed by electronic warfare measures and did not damage the facility’s infrastructure.

Some Russian media outlets claimed that Kiev actually targeted the plant, possibly using the Palianytsia drone, a robotic jet craft touted by Zelensky as a major accomplishment of Ukrainian industry. Kiev’s chief of “counter-disinformation operations” claimed the incident had nothing to do with the Kursk plant, because the drone had fallen “too far” from it to say otherwise.

Fighting with the Ukrainian incursion force in Kursk Region remained steady, with the Russian military estimating Kiev’s losses at over 300 troops daily. Among the heavy weapons reportedly destroyed on Russian soil was yet another US-made M777 howitzer, according to footage released by the Defense Ministry.

Forbes has reported that Kiev sent “precious” Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks or Swedish variants of the same armor, Strv 122s, to take part in the incursion. Evidence suggests that Ukraine’s 21st Mechanized Brigade has already lost at least one of these “irreplaceable” vehicles in Kursk, the outlet said.

Ammo train on fire

On Monday, the Defense Ministry published a short clip of what it called an Iskander missile strike in Ukraine’s Nikolaev Region, which targeted a train transporting munitions; 12 railcars carrying weapons were destroyed, it stated.

The attack took place at Kazanka Station and there is a significantly longer video showcasing it available online. It purports to show the train departing from the station, as its cargo drops out and explodes. Ultimately, the engine reportedly discarded the cars and escaped to safety. The unloading was done at night and the scene was evidently recorded by a drone in thermal vision.

Last week, the Russian military claimed to have delivered a significant blow to the Ukrainian arsenal in the Kiev-controlled part of Zaporozhye Region, when it hit an industrial zone where kamikaze drones were being assembled and stored.

Father of all bombs (not) used

On Wednesday, a video emerged online which many have speculated shows the use of an ODAB-9000 bomb in the contested city of Volchansk in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. It features a massive explosion in a heavily damaged urban area.

Russia has a range of air bombs, coded by their payload type and weight. ‘OD’ stands for ‘volumetric detonating’. This type of munition, also known as ‘vacuum bombs’ and ‘thermobaric weapons’, disperses explosive as an aerosol and then causes a massive fireball.

There is no Russian bomb of this type in the nine-ton weight range. There is however a FAB-9000, a regular HE version developed in the 1950s. It’s the largest of Russian bombs, carrying over four tons of explosives, and is nicknamed the ‘father of all bombs’ as a nod to the US GBU-43/B MOAB, known as the ‘mother of all bombs,’ and actually designated the Massive Ordnance Air Blast. The Ukrainian authorities said the munition deployed in Volchansk was somewhat smaller.

Russia has been fitting old Soviet bombs with glide kits, which turn them into longer-range guided weapons to a devastating effect for the Ukrainian military. The largest variant upgraded this way so far is the FAB-3000, which can reportedly strike targets up to 37 miles (60km) away, if deployed at a sufficiently high altitude.