Russia’s Wagner Group claimed to have captured Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine this week, but the Ukrainian government has said it intends to retake the destroyed city after laying siege to it.
Ukrainian ground forces commander-in-chief Alexander Silsky said, “We continue to advance on the outskirts of Bakhmut, and we are actually close to capturing the city in a tactical siege.” 4 square kilometers of territory.
The battle for Bakhmut is increasingly becoming a focal point of the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its 65th week, against the backdrop of President Vladimir Putin’s desire to prioritize the occupation of the Donetsk region – a city with a prewar population of 70,000 and Next to the Lugansk region.
Ukraine said it used street attrition in Bakhmut to draw Russian troops from other parts of the front and inflicted heavy casualties on them. Ukrainian forces have also launched a series of flanking operations around the city over the past two weeks to retake lost ground.
The Institute for War Research, a Washington-based think tank, noted on Friday that “the Ukrainian counteroffensive near Bakhmut likely eliminated the threat of Russian encirclement of Ukrainian forces at Bakhmut and forced the Russian military to allocate scarce military resources.” resources to defend against limited localized offensive efforts, which is what the Ukrainian command wanted to achieve.”
Battle of Bachmut
Russia claims to have taken full control of Bakhmut, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulates Russian troops and Wagner mercenaries for capturing the city (Al Jazeera)
Just the next day, Yevgeny Prigozin, head of the Wagner Group and its mercenaries, said they had captured Bakhmut. The Russian Ministry of Defense followed suit, announcing overnight that the Russian side had conquered the city — vying for prestige on the Eastern Front, as they had been doing for months.
The online news service “Meduza” stated that for all intents and purposes, Bakhmut has been occupied and that the “disputed” area is limited to “a dozen high-rise buildings at the end of Tchaikovsky Avenue, schools , a kindergarten and part of the garage”.
But Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hannah Malial, said defenders still controlled an “industrial and infrastructure” area on the city’s southwest outskirts – known for its monument to a MiG-17 fighter jet “Airplane Block”.
Malial said Ukrainian troops remained nearby on Tuesday. Just a day earlier, Ukrainian soldiers launched a flanking maneuver to the north and south of the city and advanced a distance of 200 to 400 meters, Sergey Cherevati, spokesman for the Eastern Ukraine Military District, said, adding that the fighting had not yet begun. Finish.
Russia has devoted significant resources to this fight.
Malial said on Saturday that Russia had sent thousands of reinforcements to Bakhmut. These include airborne troops, motorized rifles and special forces, Cherevati said. British military intelligence believes the reinforcements may include several battalions, underscoring the importance of the battle to the Kremlin.
A British intelligence analysis noted that “the Russian leadership is likely to continue to view the capture of Bakhmut as a key immediate war objective, which would allow them to claim a degree of success in the conflict.”
Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andrei Yusov said on Sunday, “In general, the fact that the enemy is forced to transfer additional reserves to continue its operations against Bakhmut shows that their offensive has failed. .”
The Wagner Group has borne the brunt of the fighting at Bachmut, but its leader Prigozin threatened to withdraw troops in early May, a move the Russian Defense Ministry said would be considered treason. But on Sunday, Prigozin said his soldiers would withdraw starting this Thursday to hand over control to the Russians.
Invasion of Belgorod
Meanwhile, further north-east, two pro-Ukrainian anti-Kremlin militias launched a rare incursion into neighboring Russian territory on Monday.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said Russia’s Federal Security Service, Border Service and National Guard were fighting “sabotage and reconnaissance groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces”.
The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement in the incursions, but members of the two groups have claimed responsibility for the operations, the so-called “Russian Volunteers” and the “Free Russian Army”.
A video posted by the “Russian Free Army” on social networking sites said, “Russian residents! We are Russians like you”, “The only difference between us is that we no longer want to defend criminal behavior under Russian power, Instead, take up arms to defend our freedom and yours. Russia under Putin festers with corruption, censorship and repression.”
Military journalists reported that the armed groups occupied the settlement of Kozinka near the border and attacked two other settlements.
Yusoff identified these armed men as Russian guerrillas and said they had launched “an armed struggle against Putin’s criminal regime.” He also said they could establish a “specific security zone” in the “Russian border area with Ukraine”, from which Russia now regularly launches shelling of Ukrainian towns and settlements.
It is unclear what role, if any, Ukraine played in arming these groups. The Russian Ministry of Defense also said nothing about the source of these personnel’s weapons. Ukrainian presidential adviser Podolyak said Ukraine was “closely following events in Russia’s Belgorod region … but it has no direct relationship to them”.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that it had driven the militants back to Ukraine and had killed more than 70 of them. The ministry said there were airstrikes, shelling and the participation of troops covering the country’s border in the Western Military Region.
Green light for F-16
In addition, the West’s arms supply to Ukraine reached another turning point this week – US President Joe Biden supported joint training of Ukrainian pilots using F-16 fighter jets before deciding how to supply the fighter jets – which is also the Ukrainian side. urgent demands.
On the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelensky assured Biden that the fighter jets would not be used to attack Russian territory.
U.S. national security adviser Jack Sullivan said the F-16s were not part of an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“We’ve reached a point where we should look ahead and ask ourselves: ‘What does Ukraine need to build a future force capable of deterring and defending against Russian aggression? ‘The fourth-generation fighter F-16 is part of that.”
The Group of Seven nations have signed off on new sanctions targeting Russia’s energy, metallurgy, technology and defense industries. They also sanctioned “the network of international organizations that procured components for the Russian company that produced the Orlan drone.”
Ukrainian intelligence pointed out months ago that Russia was using intermediary countries to purchase sensitive components such as microchips from Western companies for its missiles and drone production.