Aid groups are ordered to leave Bakhmut
KYIV, Ukraine — Aid groups and civilians will not be able to enter Bakhmut starting Monday, Ukraine’s military said, as fighting intensifies in Russia’s monthslong campaign to seize the city in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army said that it would no longer allow aid groups in the city because of the danger posed by street fighting. The ban on volunteer access could suggest a prelude to a Ukrainian withdrawal, although the Ukrainian military has insisted it retains control of the city, can resupply troops and can evacuate its own wounded.
After months of withering bombardment, Russian forces, including regular troops and mercenaries from the Wagner private military company, appear to have surrounded Bakhmut on three sides. Ukraine’s military said street fighting had commenced in two neighborhoods and that the one remaining road Ukrainian forces use to gain access to the city was under Russian fire.
Speaking in a video address posted online, a Ukrainian commander who goes by the nickname Madyar said the ban on aid organizations entering Bakhmut was necessary because the fighting now “exposes to danger even volunteers who come here with good intentions to help.”
The decision to close access to the city for aid groups suggests that the Ukrainian military cannot secure even areas in the city that for months had been considered relatively safe, such as neighborhoods on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River, which are farther from the range of Russian artillery strikes.
Ukraine has made Bakhmut, a mid-size city in the Donbas region with a prewar population of 70,000, into a symbol of its tenacious resistance to the Russian onslaught in eastern Ukraine. The city lies in ruins, and just a few thousand civilians remain, but it is an important prize for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has poured troops into the battle for a city seen as key to his stated goal of seizing the entire Donbas area.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Monday that Russian forces had taken the village of Krasna Gora, on the northern edge of Bakhmut. The statement on Telegram, a social messaging app, came a day after the Wagner private military company, whose forces have helped lead Russia’s campaign to seize Bakhmut, said that its “assault units” had taken the village.
In an assessment of the battlefield Monday, Rochan Consulting, an analytical group based in Poland, noted Russia’s encroachment on Bakhmut from the north and the south in recent days and said the city could fall as soon as this week.
Ukraine’s military repelled 19 assaults on Bakhmut over the past 24 hours, Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, said.
“Bakhmut is the epicenter of the enemy’s attack, and therefore the situation is critical.” Bakhmut, he said, “is under Ukrainian control.”
Russian forces are sending small units slipping into the city, Cherevaty said, but he said they have not gained a foothold. The Ukrainian military is continuing to “inflict heavy personnel losses on the enemy,” he said, suggesting Ukraine’s forces would keep fighting in the embattled city.
Bakhmut has been under Russian bombardment since the spring, but in the fall, Moscow’s forces pivoted to attacking the city with prisoner brigades, driving conscripts into near-suicidal assaults in a bid to overwhelm Ukrainian defensive lines.
Russian forces have pounded Ukrainian positions with thousands of artillery shells a day, clawing through multiple lines of the city defenses.
Into this crucible of violence, aid groups had continued carrying in food and medicine. The army would now provide aid to those who need it, Madyar said in the video.
“Bakhmut was, is and remains Ukrainian — that is our main slogan,” he said, speaking during what he characterized as a lull in artillery shelling Sunday, even though repeated explosions could be heard on the recording.