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Ukraine’s military leadership has fired the commander who oversaw its operations in the eastern Donetsk region, where Kyiv’s defences are buckling as Russia pushes towards a key logistics hub.

A Ukrainian official confirmed to the Financial Times on Friday that Oleksandr Lutsenko had been removed from his position as commander of the Donetsk operational and tactical group.

Ukraine’s forces, under Lutsenko’s command, had failed to stop Russia’s sweeping offensive that has taken an area roughly half the size of London in just the past month. The official said Lutsenko would be given another post in the army’s ground forces. He has been replaced by Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi.

Earlier on Friday Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said from a command centre near the city of Pokrovsk — the heart of the eastern Donetsk operation and a key logistical hub for the army — that battles were raging against a Russian army “superior . . . primarily in manpower”.

“The battles are extremely tough,” Syrsky said. “The Russians are throwing all available forces forward, trying to break through the defence of our troops.”

Deep State, a Ukrainian war-tracking group close to the defence ministry, said Ukrainian troops defending four villages south of Pokrovsk were under threat of encirclement, with Russian forces attacking “from all sides”.

Ukraine’s largest steelmaker, Metinvest, also announced the suspension of operations at the only mine producing coking coal in the country after Russian forces pushed to within 2km of the site near Pokrovsk, according to a company memo.

The mine produced around half of Metinvest’s total Ukrainian coal extraction volumes and is a source of the type of coal needed to produce coke, which is essential for steel manufacturing. Metinvest said it had evacuated core personnel and their family members from the site.

Russian forces have recently been advancing at their fastest pace since 2022 and their current focus is Pokrovsk, as well as the key towns of Kurakhove and Velyka Novosilka to the south. The area is near three major highways that run to the Dnipropetrovsk region and the city of Dnipro, which is crucial to the Ukrainian military’s operations across much of the 1,000km frontline.

Underscoring the dire situation facing Ukraine’s army on the eastern front, Syrsky warned that he would have to soon resort to making “non-standard decisions to increase the stability of the defence and more effectively destroy the occupiers”.

He did not elaborate on what those measures would be. But Syrsky, who designed Kyiv’s controversial incursion in Russia’s Kursk region in August and successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv in 2022, is known for taking risks to try to disrupt his enemy’s plans and shift the momentum on the battlefield.

Ukraine’s biggest challenge is manpower, according to analysts. Its experienced troops are being killed or wounded, while a mobilisation effort has largely faltered. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is around 45, with many new draftees in poor physical shape.

Russian forces greatly outnumber the Ukrainian troops, despite taking heavier casualties on the frontline. Commanders in Donetsk region told the FT that their soldiers were sometimes outnumbered 8/1.

The US has urged Zelenskyy to reduce the military recruitment age from 25 to 18 to address the manpower shortage that has weakened its battlefield position and contributed to Russia’s sweeping gains. But he has pushed back strongly against that advice and sought to shift the blame on to delays in the supply of western weaponry.

“Let there be no speculation — our state is not preparing to lower the mobilisation age,” Zelenskyy told parliament last month.

Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Brussels