Die ukrainische Stadt Russland konnte es nicht nehmen

***The Telegraph reports:***

For long stretches of the day nothing stirs on the surface of the ruined town.

Venturing above ground invites swift retribution from the hunters in the sky, the omnipresent drones that lurk above Toretsk’s apocalyptic landscape, ready to drop their small but deadly explosive charges at the first hint of movement.

The town’s 30,000-strong population has long fled. For the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers battling over its skeleton, life – bleak and tenuous – mostly exists in a subterranean world of basements, trenches and dugouts carved into the coal-rich soil of the Donbas, eastern Ukraine’s bitterly contested industrial heartland.

Karina – “Octopus” to use her call sign – is a hunter.

As a reconnaissance and attack drone pilot in Ukraine’s Khyzhak “Predator” Brigade, it is the job of her four-person squad to identify and target enemy soldiers, using hand-held drones armed with fragmentation grenades to attack them as soon as they emerge onto the streets.

If the Russians attempt to muster in numbers, Octopus can unleash havoc. Over the course of a single 24-hour shift in December, her team estimates it killed or wounded 30 Russian soldiers.

“There may well have been others,” she says. “Those are just the ones we could confirm.”

The long and grinding battle for Toretsk, once an important mining town, is significant in its own right. Should it fall, the Russians would be better placed to advance on the industrial city of Kostiantynivka, a key target 12 miles north-west of Toretsk. From there it could progress to the last unoccupied urban strongholds of the Donetsk region: Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk and Lyman.

Were they to capture those cities, Russia would finally have full control of Donetsk, thus achieving one of its principal war aims amid talks between Moscow and Washington that could see Ukraine forced to cede swathes of territory in exchange for peace.

**Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/russia-ukraine-casualties-2024-losses-toretsk/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/russia-ukraine-casualties-2024-losses-toretsk/)

Misleading title, just pay homage to the soldiers you’re talking about instead of naming the article a blatant lie