The small town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine continues to be the focus of the main efforts of the Russian offensive in the country: at the moment it is said to be almost completely encircled by the Russians. However, the Ukrainian army does not seem to have any intention of withdrawing, despite the fact that only one access road to the city remains.
In recent days, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky described Bakhmut’s situation as “increasingly complicated”, while General Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of the Ukrainian army, reached the troops in the city for the second time in a week to verify the possibilities of resistence.
Bakhmut has been under relentless Russian attack since August: Russian forces’ military operations are handled almost exclusively by the Wagner Group, a mercenary group of ex-servicemen and ex-convicts that is affiliated with the Russian military. The Wagner group is led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and politician who, thanks to his intervention in the war, has become one of the most influential figures in Russian politics.
Just Prigozhin, in a video recorded a few kilometers from the town, claimed to be close to the complete encirclement of the Ukrainian troops, which he asked to surrender. “The pincers are tightening,” he said in the video, which also features some Ukrainian prisoners.
Prigozhin’s announcements in the past have not always proved to be reliable, but Bakhmut’s situation has been considered very complex for the past week and there are signs of difficulty in the resistance. The limitations in accessing the city would be complicating the supplies of artillery shells available to Ukrainian soldiers, who also find fewer and fewer intact buildings in which to protect themselves: the city is now almost completely destroyed by the continuous bombing by Russia, which has his conquest a huge number of men and weapons.
After months of bombing, the city is almost completely destroyed (AP Photo/Yevhen Titov)
From a military and strategic point of view, Bakhmut, which before the war had about 70,000 inhabitants, is not enormously important: however, it is located on the road that leads to the most important Ukrainian cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and is an obligatory passage if the Russian army wants to advance. Moreover, it would be the first major victory for Russia in many months, after the several important defeats suffered in this war year. It is located in the Donetsk region, one of the four that Russia annexed last September with an illegal referendum, and is far from the two main fronts of the war (the one in the north-east and the one in the south).
At the moment, however, the Ukrainian army seems intent on defending the city. Official communications speak of “Russian attacks repulsed” and work is said to be underway to repair the damaged roads and to reposition the troops, abandoning only some parts of the city.