Comment on this storyComment
KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have been reduced to small bases in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which despite its limited strategic importance has become the bloodiest battlefield of the war. However, according to Ukrainian officials and military personnel on the ground, they have made advances on the Russian flanks to encircle the city and expand the fighting there.
“I’m in the trenches. We have fortified ourselves on positions that Russia once held, Yuri, a soldier in the Ukrainian Army’s Fifth Separate Assault Brigade, wrote in a text message from a position south of Bakhmut, near the village of Klishchyivka. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“There are a lot of dead Russians around us,” he said.
Ukraine still holds parts of the city, including the area around what has become the landmark of Ukraine’s last redoubt: a destroyed sculpture of a Soviet MiG fighter jet, according to several military personnel involved in defending the position that the Russian armed forces continue to dispute.
Zelenskyy says the destroyed Bakhmut now lives “only in our hearts”
Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s eastern military commander, who made a surprise visit to the frontline on Sunday, acknowledged that Ukraine controls only a “small part” of Bakhmut, but said the new goal is to keep the city in a “tactical encirclement.” ‘, echoing a statement published on Telegram by Deputy Secretary of Defense Hanna Maliar.
News of this strategy of prolonging the struggle regardless of who was actually in control of the city broke when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in response to questions asked during a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, issued a somber Picture of the state of the struggle drawn summit of the Group of Seven. His comments raised questions about what a Ukrainian victory would look like given the city’s devastation and the costs its defenders have already paid.
“You have to understand that there is nothing,” said Zelesnky on Sunday – nothing from Bachmut, as was once left to control.
The city in northeastern Donetsk region was home to around 70,000 people before Russia invaded Ukraine last year. It has since been decimated and ravaged by some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict as Russian troops and mercenary Wagner Group troops, composed largely of freed Russian prisoners, gained block after block of ground.
Ukraine defended Bakhmut despite US warnings in leaked documents
On Saturday, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed his troops had finally captured the entire city, and the Kremlin released a statement from Russian President Vladimir Putin praising the city’s liberation and dubbing it the Soviet-Russian name Artemovsk. Ukraine rejected the claims.
Full conquest would be a rare victory for Moscow, which had struggled to claim clear victories since the war began.
However, internal disagreements over Bakhmut reigned on the Russian side, and Prigozin publicly criticized his Russian military colleagues for their handling of the attack. Ukrainian forces were able to exploit these differences to repel an enemy who vastly outnumbered them.
How the Ukrainian Armed Forces denied Russia’s victory in Bakhmut until Victory Day
Stanislav Bunyatov, 22, a soldier with the 24th Separate Assault Battalion who was injured in fighting near the villages of Klishchyivka and Ivanivske on Wednesday, said his unit was able to attack at a time when Wagner mercenaries were being replaced by Russian soldiers.
“They weren’t prepared for us,” said Bunyatov, who is recovering from a shrapnel injury in the city of Dnipro.
Reports of Ukrainian successes outside of Bakhmut contrast with stories of setbacks within the city. On the roads to Khasiv Yar, a town west of Bakhmut that serves as a base for Ukrainian forces, some soldiers expressed pessimistic views about the battle for the town.
“Bakhmut is finished,” a 47-year-old soldier with the 24th Brigade said on Sunday, who wanted to share his candid assessment on condition of anonymity. He said he was in town the day before.
Ukrainian advances were reported from surrounding areas, with commanders announcing on May 9 – Victory Day in Russia – that they had taken more than a square mile of territory south of the city. Officials have presented this as a strategic move.
Such advances make it “very difficult for the enemy to remain in Bakhmut,” Maliar wrote on Telegram on Sunday, referring to the capture of high ground outside the city.
The battle for Bakhmut has puzzled some analysts, who have called it strategically irrelevant to the broader war. Ukraine is preparing a long-awaited spring counter-offensive in which it hopes to breach Russian defenses on at least part of its 200-mile front line.
If Russian troops are pinned down at Bakhmut, some argue, this could affect their preparedness elsewhere.
President Biden said Sunday in Hiroshima that Russia suffered more than 100,000 casualties at Bakhmut, a staggering number considering it is accurate.
Russia’s difficulties in holding the city may be exacerbated by Prighosin’s claim that he intends to pull Wagner fighters out of the city to open up new business opportunities in Sudan.
Barring some pessimism, Ukraine seems poised to continue the fight. Bunyatov, the soldier who is recovering from a grenade wound, said he hopes to return to the front lines, preferably to Bakhmut.
“My brothers in arms are here,” he said.
One year of Russia’s war in Ukraine
Portraits of Ukraine: The life of every Ukrainian has changed, big and small, since Russia launched its full-scale invasion a year ago. They have learned to survive and support each other in extreme circumstances, in bomb shelters and hospitals, destroyed apartment complexes and destroyed marketplaces. Scroll through portraits of Ukrainians reflecting on a year of loss, resilience and fear.
Attrition: Over the past year, the war has turned from an invasion on multiple fronts, including Kiev in the north, to a conflict of attrition, mostly concentrated in a vast area to the east and south. Trace the 600-mile frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces and get a glimpse of where the fighting is concentrated.
Living apart for a year: The Russian invasion and Ukraine’s martial law, which prevents men of fighting age from leaving the country, have forced millions of Ukrainian families to make agonizing decisions about balancing safety, duty and love, while unrecognizable lives that were once connected are. This is what a train station full of farewells looked like last year.
Global rifts deepen: President Biden has proclaimed the war-forged, revived Western alliance a “global coalition,” but a closer look reveals that the world is far from united on the issues raised by the Ukraine war. There is ample evidence that efforts to isolate Putin have failed and that sanctions have not stopped Russia thanks to its oil and gas exports.
Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Check out 3 more stories