Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/BAKHMUT, Ukraine: Russian forces press ahead with an assault on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in their attempt for a breakthrough in the year-long war against Ukraine.
One US official said that Russia had made a few short-term territorial gains. According to a statement issued by the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff late Tuesday night, Ukrainian aircraft carried out three retaliatory strikes on Russian forces.
Bakhmut, which had a pre-war population of around 70,000, had been devastated during months of fighting as a central plan of Russian assaults that has tested Ukrain’s defence capabilities, according to Reuters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his video address that the most challenging part was Bakhmut and the fighting was essential for the city’s defence from Russian aggression.
He said that Russia did not care about its people and continued to send them in constant waves against his country, and the intensity of the fighting was only increasing.
Russian takeover of Bakhmut
The Russian takeover of Bakhmut would open the way to seizing the last remaining urban centres in the industrial Donetsk region. While most of the Russian attacks had been focused on Bakhmut and other towns and villages in Donetsk, Russian forces shelled over 20 settlements in northern regions near the Russian border, including in Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv.
Russia’s state-run RIA news agency released a video showing Russian Su-25 fighter jets roaring over Bakhmut. “We are glad they are ours,” said a man in the video identifying himself a fighter of the mercenary Wagner Group He said that Russian jets helped them “psychologically”.
In Washington, senior US defence official Colin Kahl told a congressional hearing on Tuesday that Bakhmut was a “grinding slog” and there was nothing to suggest “the Russians could sweep across Ukraine and make significant territorial gains anytime soon.”
Ukraine has sought weaponry from its western allies to protect itself from Russian missiles and drone attacks that has damaged the power grid and other infrastructure, and killed hundreds of civilians and left millions without electricity and water.
