The battle for Bakhmut continues. The Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled about 20 Russian attacks in the area near the strategic city of Donbass in the past 24 hours. Russia’s Wagner private militia chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said Ukrainian forces would not leave Bakhmut and fighting continued in the west. “The enemy is not retreating, he has a well-organized defense inside the city,” Prigozhin said on Telegram, especially in the western sector. As a result, the Wagner boss again criticized the Russian military leadership, pointing the finger in particular at General Sergei Surovikin, the chief of the air defense forces. “I haven’t seen Surovikin for a long time, I don’t know what he’s doing,” she stressed.
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Yesterday it was Volodymyr Zelenskyy who denied that Bakhmut had been captured by Russian forces while admitting that the situation in the city was “the most difficult” of those on the war front. For this reason, the Ukrainian President stressed that although his main goal is not to back down, if at some point the situation would become even more complicated and the risk of even greater losses for Bakhmut would increase.
According to Ukrinform, Zelenskyy would have left the door open to General Oleksander Sirskii, in charge of operations in the city, to eventually order a retreat. But to avoid this, the President took the opportunity to reiterate his call to allied Western powers to increase arms supplies to Kiev. The more weapons the armed forces receive, the faster Ukrainian soldiers can turn the tables not only in the city of Bakhmut, but throughout the country.