The heavy fighting in and around Bakhmut could soon come to a head. Ukrainian forces defending the city are facing increasing pressure from Russian mercenaries and fighters. “Ukrainian forces seem to be setting the conditions for a controlled withdrawal of parts of Bakhmut,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Saturday. Russian artillery struck Bakhmut’s last exit routes on Friday, aiming to completely encircle the Ukrainian city. The UK Ministry of Defense tweeted that Kiev is “reinforcing the area with elite units.” They are also destroying key bridges, another sign of withdrawal. “Regular forces of the Russian army and Wagner Group have advanced into the northern suburbs of the city, which is now a Ukrainian-controlled salient, vulnerable to Russian attacks from three sides. “Ukrainian-held supply routes outside from the city are becoming more limited,” says the British army. Even so, Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were moving to the front. To the west, the Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions. Denys Yaroslavskyi, commander of a Ukrainian army unit in Bakhmut, admitted to Espreso TV that parts of some units had been ordered to rotate to safer positions, describing the situation on Friday as “a slaughterhouse on both sides.” The reasons Putin used to try to justify his war was the ‘defense’ of the Russian-speaking Ukraine, but his invasion has reduced to rubble precisely ci cities where Russian was spoken and has sent into exile or mass graves Ukrainians who also used to speak Russian.
Since May Russian forces have been fighting to capture Bakhmut – a city that once numbered about 70,000 before it was razed to the ground by the Russians – and have suffered “devastating” casualties in the process. Today Bakhmut is destroyed, but Moscow aspires to achieve its first great victory in half a year. After the bloodiest fighting of the war, controlling that space is a step towards more important areas of Donbas. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that the former prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuri Lutsenko, spoke about an order to leave the city received in the last hours. There he has been performing the role of drone operator. The Russian media point out the importance of the city not so much for Russia but for taking away from Kiev a prominent transportation hub for supplies. Ukraine believes that, despite everything, the Russians have been more worn out. In the battles for Bakhmut, the Russians lose seven times more soldiers than the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
Before the Russian victory occurred, it already had several parents. Evgeni Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, boasted in a video posted on Friday that Bakhmut was “practically surrounded” by his forces and that Ukrainian soldiers had only one path left: retreat. For his part, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has paid a rare visit to Russian forces deployed in Ukraine, his office said on Saturday. Unlike Volodimir Zelensky, both President Vladimir Putin and his ministers have been very careful to do not approach the front. But Bakhmut is a relatively important piece after months of retreat and drought. Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the Eastern Military District south of Donetsk.” The minister and Wagner’s boss compete for a place on the war stage. Prigozhin accused the minister and other commanders of “treason” last month. The cost in men has been enormous for both sides. Prigozhin posted a video on Saturday showing coffins that he said contained the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers who were being repatriated to kyiv-controlled territory.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces this morning denied claims of a massive withdrawal of Ukrainian troops. “The fighting in Bakhmut is more on the outskirts, with the city controlled by the Ukrainian defense forces: the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Border Guard and the National Guard, and there is also no massive withdrawal of Ukrainian troops,” he told CNN Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesman for the eastern grouping of the armed forces. More than 150 Russian soldiers were killed, 239 wounded and three taken prisoner, he added. Bakhmut deputy mayor Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC-Radio that there was fighting in the city and also street battles but thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces still They have not taken control of the city. A woman was killed and two men seriously injured by shelling as they tried to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, Ukrainian troops helping them said. As reported by The Guardian, many people flee on foot to avoid the danger of the vehicle being hit. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said he is confident Western countries will supply fighter jets to Kiev and is optimistic that the war will end this year. Ukraine expects to receive “two or three different types” of fighter jets and believes that “it will be done again through a kind of coalition,” he said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild.
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