Monitoring Desk
KYIV: Ukraine said on Tuesday its forces were under pressure in the frontline Bakhmut city, where Russian troops were launching heavy attacks after months of fighting.
Bakhmut has become a political objective largely since the longest battle in the year-long Russian invasion has nearly destroyed, causing high casualties on both sides.
Aerial footage shows almost all of Bakhmut city’s buildings in ruins and smoke rising over the strategically significant city once known for salt mines and its sparkling wine production.
As combat intensified, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said the top priority for Ukraine was to fight off Russian invasion with the backing of allies and that in the “long-term,” the country would join the alliance.
In mid-February, the governor of the eastern Donetsk region Pavlo Kyrylenko said that out of the 70,000 people living in the city before the war, less than 5,000 people, including 140 children, remained.
“The situation around Bakhmut city is extremely tense,” Oleksandr Syrskyi, the chief of Ukraine’s ground forces, posted on social media.
“Despite incurring significant losses, the enemy has dispatched its best-trained Wagner group assault units to try to break through the defences of our forces and surround the Bakhmut city,” Syrskyi said, referring to the Russian paramilitary group.
President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the devastated city of Bakhmut in December and vowed to hold on.
Ukraine vows to fight for Bakhmut
Zelensky has said Ukrainian troops would fight for the city as long as they can and has urged weapons deliveries from allies for months to help Ukraine regain the territory lost in the Donetsk region.
Russia said on Tuesday its forces downed two drones of Ukraine that targeted civilian infrastructure in the country’s south, the latest in a series of drone attacks inside Russia that Moscow blamed on Kyiv.
Ukraine has faced Russian troops determined to seize Bakhmut city, whose symbolic significance now outstrips its military importance.
In particular, the Wagner group has taken center stage in the fight for the city of Bakhmut.
The rivalry between the Wagner group and the regular Russian army has come to light, with Prigozhin issuing an unprecedented call to Russians to take his side last week and urging the defence ministry to share arms and ammunition with his fighters.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) maintained that Russian troops might adapt their tactics to copy the Wagner group’s strategy.
