Ukrainian T64 tanks move towards Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast on March 20, 2023. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images
- Russia has sent a new military formation of around 15,000 soldiers to the battle for Bakhmut.
- Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said the 25th Army was deployed earlier than planned.
- Budanov said Ukraine was holding Putin’s forces near Bakhmut to prevent a move south.
Ukraine is stationing a newly created Russian reserve force near Bakhmut and is confident the 15,000-strong unit will be destroyed, Ukraine’s intelligence chief says.
Kyrylo Budanov told The War Zone that Ukraine is detaining Russian forces in Bakhmut to prevent them from deploying to other axes where its counteroffensive is advancing.
“The Russians recently redeployed their only reserve force – the 25th Army – which was only recently formed and whose construction is still ongoing,” he said.
“Now it will be moved approximately north of Bakhmut and buried there.”
The 25th Combined Arms Army was formed this summer, a rare move for the Russian military, which has rarely created new organizations during the conflict, and the British Ministry of Defense said in August.
The unit was suddenly sent to the front, even though soldiers had been told they would be sent into combat in December, the British ministry said said in an update earlier this month.
Their hasty deployment is likely a sign that Russia “continues to struggle with an overstretched force on the front lines,” the update said.
It is not clear when exactly the unit was deployed.
As fighting continues around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia occupied in May, Ukraine’s counteroffensive is advancing in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south of the country.
Oleksandr Tarnavsky, the Ukrainian general who led the counteroffensive on the country’s southern front, told CNN in a report published on Saturday that his troops had broken through near the town of Verbowe in the southeastern Zaporizhia region and were continuing to advance.
Budanov said: “The threat to the Russians of losing Bakhmut forces them to move more and more troops to the Bakhmut area, which of course diverts their resources from other directions such as the south.”
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