Ukraine has said its troops are still in the eastern city of Bakhmut and working on its flanks to surround Russian fighters who claim to have occupied the ruined road and rail hub, which has been at the epicentre of the longest and bloodiest battle in the neighbours’ war.
“The Ukrainian military is now in Bakhmut, they are performing a very important task. I won’t share at what points (they are located), but this suggests that Bakhmut has not been captured by the Russian Federation today,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday.
“We are holding on thanks to the courage of our warriors. We don’t leave our people to die. I understand what is happening there and why. I cannot share the tactics of our military, but a country that is 10 times larger cannot defeat us,” he added at a G7 summit in Japan.
Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on Sunday that Ukrainian troops still held certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in Bakhmut and at least one district in the southwest of the devastated city.
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“The enemy failed to surround Bakhmut and lost part of the dominant heights around the city. That is, the advance of our troops in the suburbs along the flanks, which is still continuing, makes it very difficult for the enemy to stay in Bakhmut. Our troops took the city in semi-encirclement, which gives us the opportunity to destroy the enemy,” she added.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, said that “despite the fact that we now control a small part of Bakhmut, the importance of its defence does not lose its relevance. This gives us the opportunity to enter the city in case of a change in the situation. And this will definitely happen.
“We continue to advance on the flanks in the suburbs of Bakhmut and are actually nearing a tactical encirclement of the city. Thanks to this we will be able to dominate all high-rise buildings occupied by the enemy and gradually destroy them. This deprives the enemy of control over the approaches to the city and gives us certain tactical advantages.”
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has led its bid to seize Bakhmut, and the organisation’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday that his fighters had taken full control of the city. In recent weeks he has repeatedly lambasted top Moscow officials over alleged ammunition shortages and retreats by Russian military units from positions on Bakhmut’s flanks.
Using the Soviet-era name for Bakhmut, the Kremlin said Russian president Vladimir Putin “congratulated the Wagner assault units as well as all service personnel of the Russian (military) who rendered them the required support and protected the flanks, on completion of the operation to liberate Artemovsk”.
Mr Prigozhin said his fighters would secure Bakhmut and then leave for “rest and retraining” on May 25th, after handing it over to the control of the Russian military.
Analysts said this extremely short handover period could increase Russian forces’ exposure to attack and may suggest that Wagner wants to escape possible encirclement and potential criticism for a Ukrainian fightback in the area.
“Photographs of ruined Hiroshima absolutely remind me of Bakhmut and other similar settlements. Nothing left alive, all the buildings ruined,” Mr Zelenskiy said after visiting the cenotaph to victims of the world’s first atomic bombing of a city. The ruins of our cities which have been burned to the ground by Russian bombs and artillery are similar to that I have just seen here.”
