Global Courant 2023-05-21 16:00:58
Ukrainian soldiers continued to engage Russian troops in heavy fighting in and around Bakhmut on Sunday, military officials said, hours after Moscow and Wagner’s private army announced their forces had taken full control of the eastern city.
The fog of war made it impossible to confirm the situation on the ground during the invasion’s longest battle, and a series of comments from Ukrainian and Russian officials added confusion to the matter.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar went so far as to say that Ukrainian troops “took the city in a semi-encirclement”.
“The enemy failed to encircle Bakhmut and they lost part of the dominant heights around the city,” Malyar said. “That is, the advance of our troops in the suburbs along the flanks, which is still ongoing, greatly complicates the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”
Her comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seemed to suggest Bakhmut had fallen at the Group of Seven summit in Japan.
When asked if the city was in Ukrainian hands, Zelensky said: “I don’t think so, but you have to – to understand that there is nothing. They destroyed everything. There are no buildings. It’s a pity. It’s a tragedy.”
Zelenskyy’s press secretary later backtracked on those comments.
And the spokesman of the Eastern Group of Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhii Cherevaty, said that the Ukrainian army manages to take up positions near Bakhmut.
“The president rightly said that the city has been basically razed to the ground. The enemy is being destroyed every day by massive artillery and air strikes, and our units are reporting that the situation is extremely difficult.
“Our army has fortifications and several buildings in the southwest part of the city. There is heavy fighting,” he said.
It was just the latest turn in the situation in Bakhmut after eight months of heavy fighting.
Just hours earlier, Russian state news agencies reported that President Vladimir Putin “congratulated Wagner assault detachments, as well as all military personnel of the Russian Armed Forces, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection for the completion of the liberation operation” Artyomovsk”, Bakhmut’s name from the Soviet era.
Russia’s defense ministry also said Wagner and military units have “completed the liberation” of Bakhmut.
At the G-7 in Japan, Zelenskyy stood side by side with US President Joe Biden during a press conference. Biden announced $375 million more in aid to Ukraine, including more ammunition, artillery and vehicles.
“I thanked him for the significant financial support to (Ukraine) from (USA),” Zelenskyy later tweeted.
The new commitment came after the US agreed to allow training on American-made F-16 fighter jets, laying the groundwork for their eventual transfer to Ukraine. Biden said on Sunday that Zelenskyy had given the US a “flat assurance” that Ukraine would not use the F-16s to attack Russian territory.
Many analysts say that even if Russia were victorious at Bakhmut, the tide of the war was unlikely to turn.
The Russian capture of the last remaining terrain in Bakhmut is “not tactically or operationally significant,” a Washington-based think tank said late Saturday. The Institute for the Study of War said taking over these areas “does not give Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations”, nor to “defend against possible Ukrainian counter-attacks”.
In a video posted to Telegram, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner, said the city came under full Russian control around noon. He spoke surrounded by about six fighters, with destroyed buildings in the background and explosions in the distance.
Russian forces are still trying to capture the remaining part of the Donetsk region that is still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.
It is not clear which side paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have suffered losses believed to run into the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty figures.
Zelenskyy underscored the importance of Bakhmut’s defense in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that would require Kiev to make unacceptable compromises.
Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give Russia some tactical advantages, but would prove inconclusive to the outcome of the war.
About 55 kilometers (34 mi) north of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk, Bakhmut had a pre-war population of 80,000 and was a major industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.
Named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the city was also known for producing sparkling wine in underground caves. Its wide, tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately center with imposing late 19th century mansions – all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland – made it a popular tourist destination.
When a separatist uprising swept eastern Ukraine in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, the rebels quickly gained control of the city, only to lose it again a few months later.
After Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas after a failed attempt to capture Kiev during the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s forces attempted to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.
Fighting there eased in the fall as Russia faced Ukrainian counter-offensives in the east and south, but resumed at full steam late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in the city’s outskirts.
Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow launched a three-sided attack to try to end resistance in what the Ukrainians called “Bakhmut Fortress.”
Wagner’s mercenaries led the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his influence amid tensions with top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.
“We didn’t just fight with the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. We fought against the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand into the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.
The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid fierce house-to-house fighting. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers,” Ukrainian officials said. Both sides have been expending ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict in decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said capturing the city would allow Russia to continue its offensive in the Donetsk region, one of four Ukrainian provinces Moscow illegally annexed in September.
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