Ukraine says it advances on Bakhmut's flanks to entrap Russians
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[May 22, 2023]
By Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine said its forces north and south of Bakhmut were
advancing on Monday, to entrap Russians inside the ruined city that
Moscow says it captured over the weekend after Europe's bloodiest battle
for ground troops since World War Two.
Russia's proclamation on Saturday that it had finally captured the final
few blocks of Bakhmut culminated a battle both sides have called a
meatgrinder, and gave Moscow its first chance to declare a substantial
victory for more than 10 months.
But even as the Russians pushed forward inside Bakhmut, their forces on
the city's northern and southern outskirts were retreating at the war's
fastest pace for six months, giving both sides reasons to claim momentum
had now shifted their way.
Moscow says capturing Bakhmut now opens the way to further advances in
eastern Ukraine. Ukraine says its advance on the Russian forces' flanks
was more meaningful than its withdrawal inside the city, and Russian
reinforcements sent to hold Bakhmut will weaken Moscow's lines
elsewhere.
"Through our movement on the flanks - to the north and south - we manage
to destroy the enemy," Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar
said on Monday in televised comments.
"By moving along the flanks and occupying certain heights there, our
armed forces have made it very difficult for the enemy to stay in the
city itself."
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Ukrainian forces were still advancing, particularly south of Bakhmut,
Maliar said, though she said the intensity of fighting on the northern
flank had subsided for now. Reuters could not independently verify the
situation in either location.
Maliar also said Ukraine still held a foothold inside the city itself,
although independent monitors say any remaining Ukrainian presence there
is unlikely to be substantial.
"Wagner Group mercenaries likely secured the western administrative
borders of Bakhmut City while Ukrainian forces are continuing to
prioritise counterattacks on Bakhmut’s outskirts," the Institute for the
Study of War think tank said on Monday.
GIVE THE GENERALS GUNS
The battle inside Bakhmut so far has been led by Wagner, a private
Russian army whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has been issuing daily audio
and video messages mocking the leadership of Russia's regular armed
forces and accusing them of abandoning their flanks even as his own
forces advanced.
In his latest message on Monday, he repeated a vow to pull his troops
out of Bakhmut, beginning in three days, and hand over the defence of
the newly captured city to regular troops.
"On the western edges, defensive positions have been set up, and so
Wagner will be leaving Artyomovsk between May 25 and June 1," he said,
using the Soviet-era name for Bakhmut.
"If the Defense Ministry's own forces aren't enough, then we have
thousands of generals - we just need to put together a battalion of
generals, give them all guns, and it'll all be fine."
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The Ukrainians say they have pushed the front back in places north and
south of Bakhmut by more than a mile since last week, the fastest it has
moved since they recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November.
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Vehicles destroyed by a Russian missile
strike are seen at a damaged fire depot compound belonging to the
State Emergency Service, amid Russia's ongoing invasion, in Dnipro,
Ukraine May 22, 2023 in this still image taken from handout video.
Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in
Dnipropetrovsk region/Handout via REUTERS
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Moscow's defense ministry has acknowledged that some Russian troops
fell back outside Bakhmut last week, but has denied Prigozhin's
repeated assertion that the flanks were crumbling, or that the
military had withheld ammunition from Wagner.
The warring sides hold opposing views of the importance of the
battle over Bakhmut, once a small mining city of 70,000 people, now
an uninhabited ruin lain to waste by eight months of
street-to-street combat and bombardment.
Moscow has consistently portrayed Bakhmut as a vital strategic
objective towards its aim of securing control over the eastern
Donbas region of Ukraine it claims to have annexed last year. Kyiv
portrays the city as a "mousetrap" for Russian troops, important
mainly because of the opportunity the battle presented to destroy
the attacking forces in huge numbers.
Coming weeks are expected to demonstrate the impact that the huge
losses in Bakhmut have had on the fighting strength of both sides in
the next big phase of the war - Ukraine's first counteroffensive for
six months, expected to begin soon.
Kyiv has thousands of freshly trained troops equipped with Western
tanks and armored vehicles, and says it aims to drive all invading
Russian forces from its land. Moscow has been digging fortifications
across the entire front line to defend the parts of Ukraine it has
seized and claims to have annexed.
With the Ukrainian counteroffensive looming, Russia has launched
missile and drone strikes across Ukraine several times a week this
month, the fastest pace of such strikes since the war began. In the
latest Russian attack, some 15 blasts were heard overnight in the
southern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, a frequent Russian target lately.
"Thanks to the defense forces, we withstood the attack. Details will
come in due time," the governor, Serhiy Lysak, said on the Telegram
messaging app.
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Ukraine also said Russian shelling had knocked out power lines to
the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, located in
Russian-held territory near the front.
The past week saw a major diplomatic push by Ukraine's President
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, demonstrating newfound confidence in world
travel to attend the G7 summit of big powers in Japan, stopping on
the way at an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia. The previous week he
visited Rome, Berlin, London and Paris.
It provided a contrast from Russian President Vladimir Putin who has
left the former Soviet Union only once since ordering the invasion -
for a day trip to Tehran last July - and has yet to make any
official international visits so far in 2023.
(Reporting by Olena Harmarsh; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by
Frank Jack Daniel)
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