Monitoring Desk
MOSCOW: The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia on Sunday said that fierce fighting was ongoing in the northern areas of Ukraine’s city of Bakhmut. The city has been the focus of attention of Russian forces for weeks.
Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head and founder of the Wagner group, said his soldiers were battling for every street, every stairwell, and every house” against Ukrainian forces who were not ready to retreat.
For weeks, Russian forces have been trying to encircle and capture Bakhmut city and appear to be making costly, slow, and grinding progress.
In recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said repeatedly that the situation around the city is challenging. “Nobody will give away Bakhmut city. We will continue fighting for as long as we can fight. We consider Bakhmut city our fortress,” he said on Friday.
Britain’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Russia had made “small advances” to encircle Bakhmut.
Ukraine declares Bakhmut as its fortress
Ukrainian troops remained in control of the village of Bilohorivka, said the Luhansk region governor Serhiy Haidai on Sunday: “The situation at the front is tense; however, controlled by Ukrainian forces,” said Haidai.
“Information is being spread in the Russian Federation regarding the alleged capture of Bilohorivka and the elimination of our people from there,” the governor told the national broadcaster. “Our forces remain in their positions; nobody has captured Bilohorivka, nobody has entered there, and there is no enemy there.”
Some pro-Russian military bloggers and Moscow-installed officials have recently claimed Russian forces’ advancement in the direction of Bilohorivka, the last part of the Luhansk region held by Ukrainian forces.
“The number of Russian attacks has increased; however, all of these attacks have been repulsed by our forces, who remain in their positions.”
Two Russian missiles struck the center of Kharkiv, the capital of the Kharkiv region in the northeast of Ukraine. One of the missiles targeted a residential building, the city’s mayor said on Sunday.
“At this time, it is known that there is a fire in the apartment of one of the residential buildings and one wounded person,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging platform.
