Ukraine said its troops were doing “everything possible” to defend the eastern city of Bakhmut as Moscow accused the West of stoking anti-government protests in Georgia and warned Russia’s neighbours against aligning themselves with the US.
Electricity workers across Ukraine continued to repair damage caused by Thursday’s major missile strike in which Moscow’s military fired more than 80 rockets at Ukrainian cities and energy facilities, killing at least 11 people and causing blackouts in several areas.
“The situation in Bakhmut is tense, the enemy continues its offensive and tries to break through our troops’ defences. Our soldiers are doing everything possible to prevent the enemy from realising their plans,” Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said on Friday.
Months of heavy fighting have devastated the road and rail hub in Ukraine’s partly occupied Donbas area, and each side says it is trying to do as much damage as possible to the enemy in Bakhmut to undermine its chances of mounting a successful spring offensive.
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Ukraine says it has inflicted huge casualties on the most capable units of the Wagner mercenary group in Bakhmut, forcing Russia to send reinforcements from its regular military.
“Russia has changed tactics...It has converged on Bakhmut with a large part of its trained military personnel, the remnants of its professional army, as well as the private companies,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper.
“We, therefore, have two objectives: to reduce their capable personnel as much as possible, and to fix them in a few key wearisome battles, to disrupt their offensive and concentrate our resources elsewhere, for the spring counter-offensive. So today Bakhmut is completely effective, even exceeding its key tasks.”
Last Friday Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin urged Mr Zelenskiy to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut because Russia’s “pincers” were closing on what remains of the city, but this week Kyiv said reinforcements would be sent to that sector of the front line.
Meanwhile visiting Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin joined Mr Zelenskiy and thousands of mourners in Kyiv to honour Dmytro Kotsiubailo (27), a well-known Ukrainian commander known as “Da Vinci”, who was killed in Bakhmut this week. He first took up arms for his country nine years ago, when Russia occupied Crimea and Moscow-led militants seized parts of Donbas, after the Maidan revolution had pivoted Ukraine towards the West and away from the Kremlin.
Russia accused the West on Friday of trying to oust the government of Georgia, where major street protests this week prompted the ruling party to scrap plans to tighten control on civil society groups that critics compared to measures used by the Kremlin to crush opponents.
“It is very similar to Kyiv’s Maidan. There is no doubt that the bill on registering those non-governmental organisations … was just an excuse to start an attempt to change power by force,” said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. “Developments in Georgia are certainly being orchestrated from overseas. The driver is the same –- the desire to create an irritant along Russia’s borders,” he added.
“It seems to me that all countries located around Russia should draw conclusions about how dangerous a course it is to be drawn into the zone of responsibility, the zone of interests, of the United States.”
Mr Lavrov offered no evidence for his claim about Georgia, where protesters say they fear their state is moving towards authoritarianism and away from the West. The ruling Georgian Dream party insists it is striving for EU membership, but the bloc’s doubts over its governance have caused the Caucasus country to fall behind Ukraine and Moldova on the long road to accession.
