UKRAINIANS FLEEING ‘HELL’
Ukrainian troops and civilians on Saturday fled the “hell on Earth” that Bakhmut has become as Russian forces inched closer to taking the battered city seen as key to Moscow’s eastern push.
At least one woman was killed and two men were badly injured by Russian airstrikes while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut, the center of fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine for months.
Two bridges were demolished over the past two days, including a span connecting the city’s last main supply route to the city of Chasiv Yar, the UK’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update Saturday.
The city was “under increasingly severe pressure,” the report said, with both Russian Army and Wagner Group forces advancing into the suburbs, making it possible to attack Ukrainian forces from three sides.
Separately, the head of the Wagner mercenary force — which infamously recruited convicts from Russian prisons — said that Bakhmut is “practically surrounded.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and founder of the mercenary group, called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video recorded on a rooftop 4 miles north of Bakhmut, to withdraw his forces.
“Only one route is left,” he said. “The pincers are closing.”
After Prigozhin spoke, the camera panned to what appear to be three captured Ukrainians, two boys and an older bearded man, who then ask to go home.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that a Ukrainian retreat appears imminent.
Ukrainian troops might “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” the group wrote in its assessment.
Russian forces have been trying to take Bakhmut since May 2022 and have suffered “devastating casualties in the process,” the think tank added.
Losing the city to enemy forces would cause supply issues for Ukraine, but its strategic value is dwarfed by the potential symbolic importance of what would mark Russia’s first victory in months, following what has been a bloody stalemate.
Casualties have been mounting in Ukraine, where at least 8,006 civilians were confirmed killed and 13,287 injured since Russia invaded a year ago, the United Nations Human Rights Office said Saturday, adding that the actual figures are likely higher. Estimates for troop deaths vary, but Western intelligence sources estimate that each side has suffered about 150,000 casualties.
A police group known as “Dark Angels” has been removing Bakhmut’s dead while their counterparts, the “White Angels” scramble to evacuate the remaining children and elderly, the Observer reported.
Oleksandra Hacrylko, a major with the White Angels, said the group’s search for children has led to false rumors that authorities are taking kids from parents who refuse to leave.
“There have been cases of people hiding children because they’ve heard rumors that the police will take their children by force,” she said, noting that they will only evacuate children with the consent of their parents.
Moscow’s forces Saturday continued targeting other regions with airstrikes.
Zelensky posted an image of a destroyed apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
At least 11 people died in the strike, The Telegraph reported.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was ridiculed during a speech in which he said the war was “launched against” his country.
“The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using the —” Lavrov said before being cut off by laughter at the G20 Summit in New Delhi. “Ukrainian people, of course, influenced the policy of Russia, including energy policy,” Lavrov continued before he was stopped by more laughter and an audience member yelling, “Come on.”