Ukraine seeks to reinforce Bakhmut as enemy gains
Russian advances into northern Bakhmut are placing severe pressure on Ukrainian forces there, the UK Ministry of Defence says in its bleakest assessment yet.
Russian advances into the northern suburbs of Bakhmut are placing severe pressure on Ukrainian forces there, the UK Ministry of Defence said on Saturday in its bleakest assessment yet of the situation in the embattled eastern city.
Russia has made Bakhmut its main target in recent months and is seeking to cut the city off, advancing from the north, south and east.
Ukraine sent elite units to reinforce the area, and two bridges in and around Bakhmut have been blown up in the past two days, including one that connects the city to the last main supply route to the town of Chasiv Yar to the west, the UK ministry said.
“Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the town are increasingly limited,” the U.K. ministry said in its daily analysis.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday it was repelling Russian assaults. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Ukrainian troops could be preparing to pull out of at least part of the city.
“Ukrainian forces appear to be setting conditions for a controlled fighting withdrawal from parts of Bakhmut,” ISW analysts said in their latest assessment.
Ukrainian commanders have long wrestled with how long to hold out in the city, which had a prewar population of some 80,000 people and was known for its sparkling wine.
While Ukraine’s military said it holds no strategic value, Bakhmut gained symbolic importance through months of dogged defence.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has long said that Ukraine will hold the city, which he visited in December and called “Fortress Bakhmut”.
But his assessment has darkened in recent days, and he has described conditions there as increasingly difficult. In recent days, he said Ukraine wouldn’t hold it at any cost.
The main Russian thrust has been carried out by paramilitaries from the Wagner Group, which recruited thousands of convicts and threw them into costly assaults.
Ukrainian officials say they are killing seven Russians for every one Ukrainian lost in Bakhmut, but Ukrainian troops are also facing mounting losses and increasingly at risk of being cut off.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries, said Friday that Ukrainian forces there were “basically surrounded”.
Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, visited Bakhmut on Friday to discuss the state of the city’s defence with military commanders.
Ukraine’s ground forces said battles were taking place in the city and its outskirts, adding that Russia had continued to reinforce the area.
Ukraine has fortified positions to the west of Bakhmut and commanders say there is little chance of a Russian breakthrough in the area that could threaten large cities further to the west, such as Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
“If the Ukrainian military command deems it necessary to withdraw from Bakhmut it will likely conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sectors of eastern Bakhmut,” ISW said in its assessment.
Battles are raging elsewhere along the front lines in eastern Ukraine as Russia dials up an offensive that has yielded only incremental advances in some areas amid heavy losses.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was mounting armoured assaults on the eastern city of Avdiivka, which has held out since the start of the Russian invasion more than a year ago.
Ukrainian Land Forces said they had destroyed three Russian tanks and five infantry fighting vehicles in repulsing a recent Russian attack.
The military posted drone footage showing artillery hitting a group of armoured vehicles advancing along a track between snow-covered fields.
In the country’s west, meanwhile, Mr Zelensky and his top aides have been pressing Western officials to find a way to prosecute alleged Russian war crimes.
A machine gun and ammunition in Bakhmut. While Ukraine’s military said the city holds no strategic value, it has gained symbolic importance through months of dogged defence.
US Attorney-General Merrick Garland made an unannounced trip to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Friday to join Ukraine’s president and others at the United for Justice Conference.
Mr. Garland held several meetings where, according to the Justice Department, he stressed and outlined US efforts to hold Russia accountable for war crimes and raise the cost to the Kremlin and its supporters for pursuing the invasion of Ukraine.
“The perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them,” Mr Garland said in remarks at the conference. The US has opened criminal investigations into war crimes in Ukraine that may violate US law.
Mr Garland also said American and Ukrainian prosecutors have zeroed in on specific crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces, including attacks on civilian targets.
In other developments, Russian ally Belarus handed a 10-year jail term to Nobel Prize winning activist Ales Bialiatski on Friday, drawing sweeping international condemnation.
And Russians in the border region of Bryansk were on edge Friday after Moscow accused Ukrainian combatants of killing two civilians in a rare cross-border incursion.
The Wall Street Journal
Is there a constitutional crisis in the US? Short answer – no
Donald Trump’s actions are aggressive, but they aren’t an executive coup. Those who say they are, are overwrought as usual.
Trump tells Jordan’s King the US will take over Gaza
Speaking at the White House with Donald Trump, King Abdullah didn’t say whether Jordan would accept Palestinians but said regional leaders were trying to work out how to make the Gaza takeover proposal work.