Front line shifting in Bakhmut battle
Ukraine insisted Saturday that its forces were fending off relentless Russian attacks in Bakhmut, even as Western analysts said that Moscow’s forces had captured most of the embattled city’s east and established a new front line cutting through its center.
Gradual Russian advances and a high number of Ukrainian casualties have fueled talk of a retreat from Bakhmut, a city in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that has been devastated by months of fighting. But Ukrainian officials say that Russian losses in Bakhmut are worse than their own, and they have signaled that they will pursue a strategy of bleeding the Russian army before a planned Ukrainian counterattack.
Despite the Ukrainian military’s assertion that it was holding on in Bakhmut, it was becoming increasingly clear that its grip on the city was tenuous and that Russian forces were making new gains. Although Bakhmut’s strategic value is debatable, Moscow is looking for a victory after a series of setbacks.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said this past week that his fighters had seized the eastern half of Bakhmut — an assertion that Ukraine’s military rejected at the time, saying that its soldiers were still fighting there.
But Britain’s defense intelligence agency said Saturday that over the past four days, Wagner fighters had taken control of most of the city’s east. The Bakhmutka River, which runs north to south through the city’s center, now marks the front line and could stymie further Russian advances west, it added.
Recent satellite images showed that bridges across the Bakhmutka, which before the war was lined by well-kept vegetation and bustling walking paths, had been destroyed. Ukraine had earlier blown up pontoon crossings to prevent Russian advances over the river — and appeared to now be using it as a new defensive line, the British agency said.
“With Ukrainian units able to fire from fortified buildings to the west, this area has become a killing zone, likely making it highly challenging for Wagner forces attempting to continue their frontal assault westward,” it said.