The fight to control Bakhmut, a Ukrainian town that has been the scene of fierce fighting for months, is not close to ending despite Russian advances, the director of the Russian Wagner paramilitary groupYevgeny Prigozhin.
Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has been the target of one of the longest Russian offensives since the operation in Ukraine began almost a year ago.
The experts consider that the position is not strategic, but that the town has acquired a symbolic and political value, and is located in the Donetsk industrial region that Moscow aspires to control in its entirety.
“Bakhmut is not going to be taken tomorrow, because there is a strong resistance, shelling, a meat grinder in operation”, Prigozhin said in reference to the considerable losses on the battlefield. “We’re not going to celebrate yet,” he declared.
Wagner – who has recruited thousands of prisoners to fight in Ukraine – has led the offensive in Bakhmut since the summer and recently managed to seize surrounding positions to try to encircle the city.
eastern resistance
Russian forces continued their attempts on Tuesday to break through the Ukrainian defensive lines on the eastern front, where they met with fierce resistance without making any significant gains.
“There is fighting in the southeastern part of Vuhledar. The situation is very difficult, the fighting is fierce, but we see some progress,” said the interim leader imposed by Russia in the region of DonetskDenís Pushilin, on Russian public television.
According to Pushilin, fighting is also taking place in the western part of Mariinka and that “there are possibilities” to be able to later occupy new positions in that part of the Donetsk front.
The cities of Vuhledar and Mariinka are located a few kilometers southwest of the city of Donetsk and have been the scene of fierce armed clashes for several months.
Pushilin also alluded to the situation surrounding the Bakhmut city whose conquest is one of the main objectives of the Russians, but where for the moment -he said- “There are no indications that point to a withdrawal of the enemy.”
Bakhmut is one of the strongholds of the Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region and is considered the key to access Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the largest cities in the Donetsk region controlled by Kiev forces.
Ukraine sends reserves
“The enemy is active in all directions, adds new and new reserves. Every day between 300 and 500 new fighters come to Bakhmut from all directions. The artillery fire is increasing with each passing day,” said Prigozhin, director of the Wagner group.
He added that to the north of the city fierce fighting is taking place and that in that area there are no conditions to encircle the enemy.
“It is taken by assault house by house, square meter by square meter (…). I don’t know where they get that there is an encirclement and other things”, said Prigozhin, who attributes the Russian advances in the front area to his mercenaries.
The spokesman for the Eastern military group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhiy Cherevaty, confirmed the intensity of the fighting near Bakhmut, stating that the Ukrainian positions in that area were attacked 243 times during the day by Russian artillery and there were a total of 37 bouts.
A big Russian offensive on the first anniversary of the invasion?
With the approach of the first anniversary of the beginning of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, which is next February 24press versions have multiplied that the Russian Army could launch a new major offensive similar to the beginning of the campaign, when it broke into the neighboring country from various directions.
However, Igor Guirkin, the retired Russian officer who led the pro-Russian armed uprising in Donbas in 2014 and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a Dutch court for the downing of flight MH17 that caused the death of 298 people, today ruled out for the moment the possibility of a great offensive.
“Currently the Russian Armed Forces nowhere have a clear superiority over the Ukrainian Armed Forces”Guirkin wrote on his Telegram channel.
According to him, the most the Russian Army can do is to concentrate forces and strike in one place, which will inevitably lead to “heavy casualties and the depletion of resources accumulated during the past mobilization and other preparations.”
(With information from AFP and EFE)
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Source-www.infobae.com