Intense fighting for the city of Bakhmut continues in eastern Ukraine. Despite heavy artillery fire, further ground attacks by the Russian armed forces have been repulsed, the Ukrainian military announced on Tuesday.
The Russian Wagner mercenary group, which is leading the attack on Bakhmut, has made small advances on the northern outskirts in recent days, the British Ministry of Defense said in its daily situation report.
“The current operational picture suggests that Russian forces have been ordered to advance on most sectors of the front,” the Ministry of Defense in London said on Tuesday, citing intelligence findings. However, they failed to gather enough combat power at any point “to achieve a decisive effect”.
Russian units presumably entered the village of Krasna Hora north of Bakhmut. On the other hand, they would hardly have been able to break through to the south of the city in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian troops held out, according to the London situation report. Russian units would also attack in the area of the towns of Kreminna and Svatove in the Luhansk region, but the local attacks were too small to achieve a major breakthrough, according to the British ministry.
Bachmut’s strategically important goal
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian troops are trying to surround Bakhmut. Bakhmut is a strategic target for Russian President Vladimir Putin to announce a symbolic victory on the upcoming anniversary of the start of the war on February 24. The Russians probably wanted to undo part of the territory conquered by the Ukrainians in the fall. “There is a realistic possibility that their immediate objective is to advance westwards to the River Sherebets,” said a source in London.
Russian attacks elsewhere in eastern Ukraine
According to the authorities, there are still nearly 5,000 civilians in the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. “The number of people in Bakhmut must be reduced to a minimum,” the military governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Tuesday night on Ukrainian television. The 36-year-old confirmed that only civilians registered in the city would be allowed to go to Bachmut. Kyrylenko said care for the remaining people was still warranted.
Fresh fighting also broke out elsewhere along the front in eastern Ukraine. In the past 24 hours, Russian attacks on a settlement in the Kharkiv region and about five settlements in the Luhansk region have been repelled, the Ukrainian military said. In addition to Bakhmut, the cities of Wuhledar, Marjinka and Avdiivka are also heavily disputed in the Donetsk region.