Russian troops have fully liberated the town of New York in the Donetsk People’s Republic, RIA Novosti reported on Monday. The settlement bearing a peculiar name had been turned into a major fortress by Ukraine.
The Russian military launched a large-scale assault on New York and the neighboring Toretsk agglomeration, a cluster of mostly industrial towns with Toretsk at its center, back in June as part of its continued offensive in Donbass. In early July, Russian forces managed to take the town center while pushing Ukrainian troops towards its northern outskirts, according to Russian media reports. Now, the northern part of the town has also come under Russian control.
Capturing New York opens a path towards Toretsk, another major Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass. Both towns have been heavily fortified by the Ukrainian military ever since hostilities broke out in the region in the wake of the 2014 Western-backed Maidan coup.
New York and Toretsk are both located less than two dozen kilometers away from Gorlovka, a Donbass town where the Donetsk People’s Republic militias took up positions back in 2014. As a result, Ukraine turned the towns into part of an important defensive line. Gorlovka was subjected to regular shelling in the years prior to the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in 2022. By mid-2017, the city had reported 235 civilian deaths linked to Ukrainian attacks.
New York was founded in the 19th century, and the origins of its name remain unclear. Some media reports link it to its original residents, who were German Mennonites. Others claim that a retired Russian officer decided to name his estate after the famous American city. In 1951, the Soviet authorities changed its name to Novgorodskoye, literally ‘New Town’ in Russian. In 2021, Ukraine’s parliament restored the historical name of New York.