(CNN) Russian forces are exhausted in Bakhmut and a Ukrainian counter-offensive could be launched soon, one of Kiev’s top generals has said, raising the prospect of an unlikely turnaround in the besieged city.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s land forces, said on his Telegram channel on Thursday:[Russians] lose considerable strength [in Bakhmut] and have no more energy.”
“Very soon we will seize this opportunity, as we have done in the past near Kiev, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupyansk,” he said.
His comments come days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a surprise trip to the frontlines of the Donetsk region and will raise hopes in the West that Kiev’s controversial decision to keep troops in Bakhmut will pay off.
Ukrainian soldiers were seen moving towards Bakhmut on Wednesday.
A counter-offensive seemed an unlikely prospect for several weeks as troops from the Russian Wagner mercenary group bombarded Bakhmut and moved closer to capturing the city.
But those efforts have come at a significant cost in manpower and resources, and now appear to have slowed.
Russian forces have launched more than 200 attacks on the area in the past 24 hours alone, but they are losing hundreds of men in their efforts every day, spokesman for the Eastern Armed Forces Grouping Serhii Cherevatyi said later on Thursday. CNN cannot verify these numbers.
Cherevatyi said another area where intense fire was seen was northeast of Bakhmut, on the front line running north from the city of Kreminna.
On Friday, Cherevatyi said on Ukrainian TV: “It’s not that [Wagner] withdraw, but have to be reinforced due to heavy losses by units of the regular army of the Russian Federation, primarily by airborne troops.”
He added that Russian forces in the region “carry out several dozen attacks every day. On the last day there were 32 gun battles” in and around Bakhmut. There have also been airstrikes launched by both fixed-wing aircraft and attack helicopters, he said, but adding that “artillery has a much bigger impact on military operations there than aviation does.”
On Thursday, the Ukraine National Resistance Center — an official body — said Wagner mercenaries had begun deporting residents of the Bakhmut suburbs they controlled.
“Militants forcibly take local residents to captured areas of the Luhansk region, where they are filtered. After that, they will be deported to Perm (Russia) and other remote regions of the Russian Federation,” the center said. “Natives are deported with the intention of evacuation. After that, they are assimilated in remote areas of the empire because they are now dependent on the occupiers.” The Center’s claim could not be verified.
Ukrainian troops fire a D-30 howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut, where heavy fighting has been going on for weeks.
The optimism of the commander of the land forces Syrskyi echoed an update on Wednesday from Ukraine’s military general staff, who said in a statement that while Bakhmut still faces heavy fighting, Russia’s “offensive potential” there is diminishing.
“The enemy continues to try to take the city, losing a significant amount of manpower, weapons and military equipment,” it said on Wednesday.
Western intelligence adopts a similar tone. “The pace of Russian operations around Bakhmut appears to be slowing,” the think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its Wednesday update on the conflict.
But this shift could also indicate a change in Russia’s priorities. “There is a realistic possibility that the Russian attack on the city will lose the limited momentum it had been given, partly because some Russian MoD units have been reassigned to other sectors,” Britain’s MoD said on Wednesday.
Zelensky presented awards to troops defending Bakhmut during a morale-boosting trip on Wednesday. “It is my honor to support our warriors who are defending the country in the toughest frontline conditions,” he later said in his nightly address.
The Ukrainian troops’ protracted resistance may justify his decision to ignore some Western calls for a tactical withdrawal from Bakhmut as the Russian offensive drew closer.
“It’s tactical for us,” Zelensky told CNN earlier this month, laying out his decision-making and insisting Kiev’s military leadership is united in prolonging the city’s defenses.
“We understand that they could go further after Bakhmut. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be an open road for the Russians to Bakhmut to other cities in Ukraine, towards Donetsk,” he said.
A town 20 kilometers west of Bakhmut is also being hit with increasing frequency by Russian missiles, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.
Three people were killed in a night Russian missile attack on the city of Konstantinivka in the Donetsk region, the authorities said.
CNN’s Tim Lister and Victoria Butenko contributed coverage.