Ukraine sending reinforcements to embattled city
Ukraine has sent reinforcements to Bakhmut, a senior Ukrainian official said Wednesday, signaling the intensity of fighting in a city that has become a crucible in the east of the country as Russian forces gradually tighten their grip.
Speaking on Ukrainian television, the official, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, did not say how many troops were being sent or for what purpose. It is unclear if the reinforcements could be needed for cover or logistical support in case of a Ukrainian withdrawal, or whether they could be part of an effort to continue to defend Bakhmut and possibly to keep Russian forces tied up so they cannot redeploy to other battles.
Ukrainian soldiers have for months held out in Bakhmut, where the death toll has been staggering on both sides. Russian forces, including large numbers of newly mobilized recruits, have been rushed to the front line in the east, giving Ukraine the opportunity to inflict thousands of casualties, even at a high cost to its own fighters.
Russia has sustained more combat deaths in the war's first year than in all the conflicts it has fought since World War II combined, including Chechnya and Afghanistan, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization based in Washington.
Ukraine has used its resistance as a symbol of the country's broader defiance a year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. But in recent weeks, Russia's reinforcements have helped Moscow seize villages and towns around Bakhmut and surround the city on three sides.
“The most difficult situation is still Bakhmut and the battles that are important for the defense of the city,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said Tuesday in his nightly address, the second day in a row that he has referred to problems facing the city's defenders.