Back in January, President Joe Biden denied that the United States would even allow allies to supply Kyiv with F-16 fighters. After a few months, the Americans changed their mind and even pledged to help train Ukrainian pilots.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi called their decision “historic”. He discussed the details of the agreement with Biden and other leaders at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, which he attended in person after weeks of speculation.
At the summit, in addition to the F-16 promise, the American president announced a new military aid package worth more than 345 million euros, which should include artillery ammunition and armored vehicles.
At the press conference, Biden promised that the G7 countries would continue to support Ukraine without pressuring it to make territorial concessions.
His statement about Bachmut caught the attention of Hiroshima
However, Zelenskyi attracted even more attention than Biden with his appearance in front of journalists. In addition to the news from the negotiations, they also asked about the situation in the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
The head of Wagner’s group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced on Saturday that his troops had occupied the last multi-storey building in the southwestern part of the city (which was known in the past for the destroyed MiG-17 monument) and that the Russians had gained complete control over it in the longest and bloodiest battle since the beginning of the invasion. At night, the Russian Ministry of Defense also repeated this when it reported the liberation of “Arthomovsk”, which is the Soviet name for Bakhmut.
President Vladimir Putin also congratulated the mercenaries from Wagner’s group.
On Sunday morning, the Ukrainian president appeared to confirm the Russian version when he declared that Bakhmut was already “only in our hearts”. After a while, however, Zelensky’s team stated that his words were taken out of context and that the city is still being fought for. At the press conference, the president himself denied that the Russians had captured the city and emphasized that the Ukrainian army was “carrying out an extremely important mission” there.
But what would it mean if Ukrainians really lost Bachmut? Military analyst Michael Horowitz on Twitter he wrote