Russian media laud Bakhmut news
‘Victory’ celebrated; revolt against Putin alleged inside Russia
TALLINN, Estonia — Russian TV went into a full frenzy of celebration as it reported Moscow’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. There were comparisons to the Red Army liberating Berlin in 1945, congratulations relayed from President Vladimir Putin and announcers emphasizing the victory by using the city’s nearly century-old Soviet name of Artyomovsk.
“The myth that Artyomovsk is an unassailable fortress has been crushed,” an anchor said Sunday night on Channel One, Russia’s most popular state broadcaster. “Those are historic events.”
A report from the smoldering city in eastern Ukraine followed, showing Russian fighters yelling “Victory!” and placing two flags — the Russian tricolor and the black flag of the private military contractor Wagner — atop a tall, partly destroyed building.
The flags were mounted “so that everyone could see them,” the correspondent said, even though the bombed-out, deserted 400-year-old city looks like a ghost of itself after the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.
Despite the Russian claims, top Ukrainian military leaders say the fight there is not over, even though they still control only a small part of the city. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Monday that Ukrainian troops hold parts of its southwestern
outskirts, while fighting continues for the strategic heights in the northern and southern suburbs.
But Kyiv says its troops played a key role in the strategy of exhausting Russian forces. Tens of thousands of fighters on both sides have died in the grinding ninemonth battle for Bakhmut.
Satellite imagery shows infrastructure, apartment blocks and buildings reduced to rubble from relentless artillery attacks.
Putin badly needed a victory in Bakhmut, analysts say, especially after a winter offensive by his forces failed to take other front-line cities
and towns. And Russia still wants to capture the entire Donetsk region — a goal that was emphasized months after the assault on Kyiv failed.
On Channel One, a Russian fighter told the correspondent he felt “probably the same emotions our grandfathers had in Berlin,” referring to the Red Army’s victorious sweep of the German capital at the end of World War II.
A similar segment on Russia 1, another major state TV channel, saw a correspondent proclaim that “the fight for Bakhmut ended in defeat” for Ukraine. Now
Russian forces can advance toward the cities of Siversk, Kostyantynivka and Kramatorsk, and even Dnipro in the southeast, she said.
The celebratory tone continued Monday even as Russia reported an incursion into its territory in the border region of Belgorod by Ukrainian saboteurs.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the attack was meant “to draw attention away from the Bakhmut axis, to minimize the political effect of Ukrainian side losing Artyomovsk.” Kyiv officials denied any link with the group and blamed the fighting on a revolt by disgruntled Russians against the Kremlin. Neither version of events could be independently verified in an area that has witnessed sporadic spillover from the almost 15-month war in Ukraine.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said a Ukrainian Armed Forces saboteur group entered Graivoron, about three miles from the border. The town also came under Ukrainian artillery fire, he said.
Ukraine intelligence representative Andrii Cherniak said Russian citizens belonging to murky groups calling themselves the Russian Volunteer Corps and the “Freedom of Russia” Legion were behind the assault.
The fog of war made it impossible to confirm the situation inside Bakhmut, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the city was not fully occupied.
The city was named Artyomovsk in 1924 after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and was known for its sparkling wine produced in underground caves. Its broad, tree-lined avenues, lush parks and late 19th century mansions have been reduced to a wasteland.
For Ukraine, which changed the name of the city to Bakhmut in 2016, the important factor has been the high number of Russian casualties and sapping of their adversary’s morale for the small patch of the front line as Kyiv prepares a counteroffensive in the 15-month-old war.
Recently, Ukrainian forces have made significant advances near strategic roads through the surrounding countryside, chipping away at Russia’s northern and southern flanks with the aim of encircling Wagner fighters in the city.
Ukraine’s tactical gains in the rural area outside Bakhmut could be more significant than they seem, some analysts say.
“It was almost like the Ukrainians just took advantage of the fact that, actually, the Russian lines were weak,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews. “The Russian army has suffered such high losses and is so worn out around Bakhmut that ... it cannot go forward anymore.”