KIEV, UKRAINE (AP) — Russian forces have made progress at the front-line hotspot of Bakhmut. Bakhmut has been a prime target in Moscow’s months-long campaign in eastern Ukraine and has suffered staggering casualties, but their offensive will be difficult to sustain without further serious losses. British military officials said in an assessment on Saturday.
In the latest of its regular Twitter updates, the UK Ministry of Defense said forces of the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary Wagner Group had occupied much of eastern Bakhmut, with the river running through the city center now marking the front line. said that
However, the update saw Ukrainian forces destroy the main bridge over the river and further Ukrainian sniper fire from fortified buildings to the west created a narrow strip of open ground in the center, leaving Wagner’s forces He added that moving forward would be “very difficult”. “Killing Zone”.
At the same time, Ukrainian forces and supply lines in the mining city remain vulnerable to “continuous Russian attempts to overtake the defenders from the north and south” as Russian forces attempt to approach them with a pincer attack. the ministry said.
Meanwhile, Russian military bloggers and other pro-Kremlin telegram accounts on Friday claimed that Russian troops had entered a metalworking plant northwest of Bakhmut. Late Friday, the Washington-based think tank also saw geolocated footage showing Russian military forces within 800 meters of him from his AZOM plant.
The War Institute notes that Moscow’s apparent focus on capturing plants, rather than opting for a “broader siege of West Bakhmut” to try to take nearby villages, suggests that the number of Russian casualties It was assessed that there was a high possibility of bringing about further waves.
Ukrainian ground forces announced their intention to hold the city on Saturday, saying on Facebook that top officers would continue to oversee “the most important sector of the front” and that Moscow would “need to prevent a long-awaited battlefield victory.” We will take appropriate measures,” he said. Colonel Oleksandr Syrskyi made several visits to Bakhmut and other hotspots on the Eastern Front during this month.
Across Ukraine, repair work continued on Saturday after a massive Russian missile and drone attack two days ago left six people dead and hundreds of thousands without heat and electricity.
Ukraine’s state-owned power grid operator said four regions continued to face power supply problems after a barrage of 80 Russian missiles and a handful of detonated drones hitting homes and critical infrastructure across the country. .
Ukrenergo said in a Facebook post that rolling blackouts continued in parts of Ukraine’s northwestern Kharkiv and northeastern Zhytomyr provinces, as well as southeastern Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv provinces. rice field. The company added that the situation in Zhytomyr was particularly difficult, with some consumers still off the grid.
A Russian shelling on Saturday set fire to a car driving in the southern city of Kherson, killing one person and injuring two others, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said in a Telegram post.
Authorities had previously reported that at least five people had been killed and another 19 injured in Russian artillery fire over the past 24 hours in the Kherson and Donetsk regions of Ukraine. The eastern province of Donetsk, where Bakhmut is located, has been the epicenter of fighting in recent months, with the Ukrainian-held Kherson region coming under daily artillery fire from Russian troops stationed across the Dnieper.
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