Wagner Group chief announces Russian advances in Bakhmut

KIEV (AP) — The owner of Russian military firm Wagner Group said Wednesday his troops had extended their advances into the crucial Ukrainian stronghold of Bakhmut, where heavy fighting continues in the longest battle of the war.

Wagner’s troops took eastern Bakhmut, claimed Yevgeny Prigozhin. They now control all districts east of the Bakhmutka River which runs through the city, in the eastern Donetsk region, he said. The center of Bakhmut lies west of the river.

Ukrainian authorities have not commented on these allegations. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that closely follows the war in Ukraine, said in its latest analysis that “Russian forces likely captured the eastern part of Bakhmut, east of the Bakhmutka River, following a Ukrainian controlled withdrawal east of Bakhmutka on 7 March.

The Wagner Group led the Russian offensive in the city, which has been underway for six months now, and has reduced the city, where more than 70,000 people lived before the war, to a landscape of smoldering ruins.

Russian troops surrounded the city on three sides except for a narrow corridor to the west. The only highway to the west was hit by Russian artillery, forcing Ukrainian forces defending the city to rely increasingly on unusable country roads until the land dried up in warmer weather. hot.

Ukrainian authorities hailed the defenders of the “Bakhmut fortress” and President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed on Monday not to withdraw from Bakhmut after chairing a meeting with his military commanders.

Western authorities have stressed that even if Ukrainian troops eventually withdraw from Bakhmut, its capture will not be of strategic importance or turn the tide of the war.

The Ukrainian army has already reinforced defensive lines west of Bakhmut to block Russian advances, including the nearby town of Chasiv Yar, a few kilometers to the west. Further west are Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the fortified Ukrainian strongholds of Donetsk.

For the Kremlin, capturing Bakhmut is essential to its stated goal of taking control of all of Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that taking Bakhmut would allow Russia to penetrate deeper into the region.