Ukraine said its top generals backed continued efforts to repel the Kremlin’s invasion force from Bakhmut, as a Russian warlord who is squabbling with Moscow said “treachery” might be to blame for problems that were undermining his fighters’ bid to seize the city.
Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has been the epicentre of fighting for several months, and Ukraine insists it has not been lost despite claims last Friday from Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, that his units had the city “practically surrounded”.
After Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy met his senior military, political and security officials on Monday, his office said the country’s top general Valeriy Zaluzhniy and fellow senior commander Oleksandr Syrskyi “spoke in favour of continuing the defence operation and further strengthening our positions in Bakhmut”.
[ Bakhmut: a ghost town of high symbolic importanceOpens in new window ]
The Ukrainian armed forces said Col Gen Syrskyi had “once again visited units defending Bakhmut and the approaches to the city” on Sunday, and quoted him as saying that “battles for Bakhmut have reached the highest level of intensity”.
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“The enemy threw Wagner’s additional forces into battle. Our soldiers are courageously defending their positions in the north of Bakhmut, trying to prevent the encirclement of the city,” he said.
“Our resistance at this bridgehead has been going on for several months. All this time, the enemy’s attempts to capture the city were broken by the steadfastness of our soldiers. Our defenders inflicted significant losses on the enemy, destroyed a large amount of equipment, forced Wagner’s best assault units into battle and reduced the enemy’s offensive potential.”
The battle for Bakhmut, involving relentless heavy shelling, close-quarters firefights and now street fighting in some parts of the city, has inflicted very heavy casualties on both sides. Analysts say the town has some strategic value as a road hub, but the battle is also an attempt by each side to grind down the other and weaken their planned spring offensives.
Bakhmut, which is now devastated and almost deserted, also has some symbolic value for Ukraine as a “fortress” city, while for Russia its capture would represent a first big battlefield gain since last summer, and the loss of much of Kharkiv and Kherson regions last autumn.
“I certainly don’t want to discount the tremendous work that the Ukrainian soldiers and leaders have put into defending Bakhmut, but I think it’s more of a symbolic value than it is strategic and operational value,” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday.
“So the fall of Bakhmut won’t necessarily mean that the Russians have changed the tide of this fight. I think it will continue to be contested ... What I do see is the Russians continuing to pour in a lot of ill-trained and ill-equipped troops. And those troops are very quickly meeting their demise,” he added.
[ Race to get last children out of Bakhmut as city becomes ‘hell on earth’Opens in new window ]
Mr Prigozhin said that after writing to a senior Russian commander to request more ammunition for his Wagner group mercenaries, “my representative at the headquarters had his pass cancelled and was denied access” on Monday morning.
He has repeatedly accused Russian officials of depriving his forces of ammunition and back-up from mobilised troops belonging to the regular military, and said of the latest such incident: “Now we’re figuring out the reason – simple bureaucracy or treachery.”
Mr Prigozhin warned on Sunday that “if Wagner rolls back now, then ... the front will collapse all the way to the Russian borders and perhaps further”.
“Wagner is the cement ... that stabilises [the Russian line] and prevents the enemy from breaking through. If we withdraw, we will go down in history as the people who played the main role in losing the war,” he added.
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