© Reuters. A Ukrainian serviceman fires an automatic grenade launcher, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the frontline town of Bakhmut, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 3, 2023. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak
KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut face increasing pressure from Russian forces, British military intelligence said on Saturday, with heavy fighting in and around the eastern city.
Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, while the Russian regular army and forces from the private military group Wagner have advanced further into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence bulletin.
The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in a Facebook post (NASDAQ:) late Saturday that Russian troops were unsuccessfully trying to encircle Bakhmut, adding that the defenders had repelled numerous attacks in and around the town.
The battle has lasted seven months. A Russian victory in the city, which before the war had a population of around 70,000 and has been destroyed in the attack, would give Moscow the first major prize in a costly winter offensive.
Oleh Zhdanov, a leading Ukrainian military affairs analyst, said late Saturday that he could detect no immediate sign that kyiv was going to order a withdrawal from the city.
“At the moment the situation is more or less stabilized. As for the advance of the Russian troops, we practically stopped it,” he said in an interview on YouTube.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said two key bridges in Bakhmut had been destroyed in the past 36 hours, adding that Ukrainian-controlled resupply routes out of the city were becoming more limited.
One such bridge connected Bakhmut to the city’s last main supply route from the Ukrainian-controlled town of Chasiv Yar some 13 km (eight miles) to the west, it said.
Russian artillery struck the last exit routes from Bakhmut on Friday, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city and bring Moscow closer to its first major victory in the war in six months.
The Ukrainian general staff also said that Russian attacks had been thwarted in the villages of Vasyukivka, Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Dubovo-Vasylivka and Hryhorivka, all of which lie just north of Bakhmut’s city center.
Russia says Bakhmut would be a springboard to complete the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of Moscow’s most important targets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who described Bakhmut as a “fortress”, thanked defenders in the town in a video message on Saturday but gave no details of the fighting.