Zelensky says Bakhmut ‘is only in our hearts’ after Russians claim control

Hiroshima: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has told Joe Biden that “there is nothing left” in Bakhmut after Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had seized the key Ukrainian city.

In his meeting with the US president at the G7 in Hiroshima on Sunday, Zelensky said the city had been destroyed. “For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing,” he said, except for “a lot of dead Russians.”

President Joe Biden, left, walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.Credit: AP

But Zelensky’s office was later forced to clarify to CNN that the president had not intended to convey that the city had been completely taken over by Russian forces as confusion over the progress of the war produced a series of claims and counterclaims.

Zelensky has flown into Japan in a high-stakes dash to secure more weapons from the world’s wealthiest economies ahead of a Ukrainian counteroffensive. The United States on Saturday said it would train Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilots after months of lobbying from Kyiv.

The G7 push has been met with threats of retaliation by Moscow, which has positioned two submarines and warships in the Black Sea, sparking fears it could hit Ukraine with more missile strikes to coincide with the G7, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s military told Ukrainian television.

In a series of meetings with G7 leaders including a session that included Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Zelensky broadened his pitch for more support beyond Europe’s borders. On Saturday, the Ukrainian President was seated next to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India has declined to back sanctions against Moscow due to its strong military ties to Russia, but Modi was seen shaking Zelensky’s hand in Hiroshima.

In this handout photo taken from video and released by Prigozhin Press Service Saturday, May 20, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group military company speaks holding a Russian national flag in front of his soldiers in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Credit: AP

“We will attract as many countries and leaders as possible for the sake of the Ukraine Peace Formula,” he said.

Zelensky also stopped at the Arab League Summit in Saudi Arabia on his way to Japan to lobby the Middle Eastern nations to assist in his war effort. The G7 leaders joined Zelensky for a photo on Sunday morning, with the Ukrainian leader standing out in khaki green among a row of suits.

“Anyone who might want to wage aggression against a democratic country sees what the response will be. And the more we all work together, the less likely anyone else in the world will follow Russia’s insane path,” he said on Twitter.

In a video posted earlier on Telegram, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary army Yevgeny Prigozhin said Bakhmut came under complete Russian control at about midday on Saturday (Europe time). He spoke flanked by about a half dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.

The Group of Seven’s commitment to staying the course in defence of Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty was underlined by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s invitation to attend the Hiroshima summit.Credit: Getty

The eight-month battle for the city in eastern Ukraine is the longest and probably most bloody of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian forces will still face the massive task of seizing the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.

It is not clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.

Zelensky underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.

Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn’t prove decisive to the outcome of the war.

Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometres north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial centre, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.

When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.

After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.

The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city’s suburbs.

Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called “fortress Bakhmut”.

Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticised.

“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.

A wounded Ukrainian soldier at a medical stabilisation point near Bakhmut on Friday.Credit: AP

The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

With AP

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