Ukraine asks civilians to flee Bakhmut

Ukrainian authorities are stepping up efforts to persuade the few thousand remaining civilians to leave Bakhmut in the face of a sustained Russian assault, a regional official said Tuesday, adding to signs that Kyiv may be preparing to retreat from a city it has defended fiercely for months.

The city, which had a prewar population of around 70,000, has steadily been emptying as the fighting has intensified. Fewer than 5,000 residents are still there, about 140 of them children, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the regional military administration.

In a further effort to reduce the number of civilians in the city, military authorities were permitting only people with special passes to return once they had left, Kyrylenko said in a national television broadcast.

“The military must focus on preparing defensive lines,” Kyrylenko said Tuesday.

Bakhmut has been the focus of a grinding Russian campaign along the roughly 140-mile eastern front. Should the city fall, it would be Russia’s biggest battlefield victory in months and add to pressure on Ukraine’s Western allies to step up their support of Kyiv.

Ukraine said it was still holding on in Bakhmut, but officials have said battles have grown more intense. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address the situation along the eastern front remained “extremely difficult.”

There were 37 separate clashes around Bakhmut in the previous 24 hours, Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, an armed forces spokesperson, said on Ukrainian television. Part of the reason for the new rules on civilian access was to keep military operations secret, he said.

Months of conflict, Russian artillery attacks and fierce fighting have shattered Bakhmut, cutting off power and water and making daily life virtually untenable for most civilians.

Ukrainian authorities first ordered civilians to leave the surrounding Donetsk region last summer. Civilians can leave on their own, but aid groups, both domestic and international, have assisted, often at great personal risk.

Bakhmut has become an increasingly important prize for both sides, in part because of the number of troops that have been committed to the battle and the casualties that each side has sustained.

“The Russian occupiers are constantly changing their tactics,” according to an account of the battle for Bakhmut posted Monday on Facebook by Ukraine’s 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade. “Sometimes they attack with small assault groups, sometimes dozens of mobilized are involved in the assault.”

Russian forces have made gains in recent weeks, cutting off some of Ukraine’s supply lines in a push to encircle the city. Russian forces were fighting in the village of Paraskoviivka on the northern outskirts of the city, Denis Pushilin, the head of the pro-Russian authority in Donetsk, said Tuesday.

“There are no prospects that the enemy will surrender and leave positions without a fight,” he said Tuesday on Russian television.

(AP/Evgeniy Maloletka) MSF medic worker treats an elderly woman inside the MSF medical train that evacuates patients from near the frontlines of the fighting to safer areas Tuesday at the train station in Pokrovsk, Ukraine.