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KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces held their positions in Bakhmut on Sunday, fiercely resisting a Russian push to encircle the city in eastern Donetsk region and prolonging a fight that has become a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance on the battlefield is.
Ukrainian officials have in recent days described their grip on Bakhmut, a small industrial town, as increasingly weak, suggesting they may have to withdraw to avoid their troops being surrounded by Russian fighters advancing from three sides .
In their bid to capture Bakhmut, Russian forces led by the Wagner mercenary group have waged a month-long assault that has claimed thousands of lives and wounded on both sides, although military experts say there is little long-term strategic opportunity worth considering to take town. If the Ukrainians withdraw, they will fall back only a few kilometers to long-planned defensive positions.
The city, which the Russians call Artyomovsk by its Soviet-Russian name, is now almost completely destroyed and most of its residents, from a pre-war population of 70,000, have fled.
Nonetheless, the battle for the city has acquired huge symbolic value in Kiev and Moscow as Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin attempts to secure a victory for the Kremlin after Russia’s regular military suffered a series of defeats, first in his attempt to there to capture Kiev and then in Ukrainian counter-offensives northeast of Kharkiv and south of Kherson.
Prigozhin sent wave after wave of fighters, many of them convicted criminals recruited straight from prison to the battlefield, into Bakhmut, who suffered huge casualties for relatively modest territorial gains.
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In turn, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has highlighted the importance of Bakhmut, calling it “the stronghold of our morality” and celebrating the troops that defended it. “Bakhmut stands” has become a rallying cry among Ukrainians.
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bakhmut’s capture would bring a needed victory and illustrate progress in enforcing Kremlin control over four eastern regions that the Russian leader has illegally declared annexed.
Despite Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive last fall, Russian forces control about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, and Putin has shown no willingness to deviate from his military goals.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently described efforts to seize the four regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – as a matter of upholding Russia’s constitution, which was amended to declare Ukrainian territory Russia.
On Friday, Russian occupation officials officially declared Melitopol as the new regional capital of Zaporizhia – a sign of both Russia’s dogged annexation claims and a failure to capture the actual regional capital: the city of Zaporizhia, which lies east of the Dnieper.
According to Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Bakhmut, Russian forces have regularly bombarded the city with artillery, mortar and rocket attacks in recent days. Ukrainian soldiers operate primarily from trenches with few remaining routes to safer ground.
Prigozhin has claimed in recent days that the city is “virtually surrounded” and that his fighters control all the main roads leading out of it.
In a video circulated over the weekend, Prigozhin complained about a shortage of ammunition and, according to media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, warned that “the entire front will collapse” if his fighters were forced to withdraw from Bakhmut. The Washington Post could not immediately verify when or where the video was taken.
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The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington think tank that conducts daily analyzes of combat developments, noted Saturday that Russian forces “have not yet forced Ukrainian forces to retreat and are unlikely to be able to to encircle the city soon. ”
ISW said Russian fighters appear capable of conducting a “turning movement” aimed at forcing Ukrainian troops to withdraw from certain defensive positions. Ukrainian forces have destroyed several bridges in the area, ISW said.
This was announced by the British Ministry of Defense over the weekend that Ukraine’s position in Bakhmut was “under increasingly intense pressure” and cited additional Russian advances on the city’s northern fringes.
The Russians pressed the city from the north, east and south. Ukraine’s fallback positions are generally to the west.
Ukraine’s military leaders have already indicated they would not try to hold the city at all costs, possibly opting to reserve manpower for a spring offensive expected to begin in the coming weeks.
Kamila Hrabchuk contributed to this report.
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