Russia trying to encircle besieged Bakhmut, says Ukraine

KYIV - Ukraine said on Sunday it was holding off attacks from Russian troops still

attempting to surround Bakhmut,

a now-destroyed eastern city that Moscow has been trying to capture for months.

Ukraine has vowed to defend “fortress Bakhmut” but has faced Russian troops determined to take the city that has turned into a political prize as the battle drags on.

The Ukrainian armed forces said “more than 130 enemy attacks” had been repelled over the past day, including in Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

“The enemy continues its attempts to encircle the town of Bakhmut,” they said on Sunday morning.

Bakhmut has been mostly reduced to rubble during the longest and bloodiest battle of the invasion.

About 4,000 residents are believed to be concentrated in shelters in Bakhmut without access to gas, electricity or water, deputy mayor Oleksandr Marchenko told the BBC. 

Russian forces are thought to have Donetsk city – largely in ruins after seven months of fighting – mostly surrounded. At least one woman was killed and two men badly wounded on Saturday while attempting to flee on foot. 

Mr Sergiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian forces, said on Saturday that the situation was “difficult but under control” in the city he described as a “priority target for the enemy”.

“The fighting in Bakhmut is more on the outskirts, with the city controlled by Ukrainian defence forces,” he told CNN.

Commenting on reports that Ukrainian units were withdrawing from the city, Mr Cherevaty said some controlled, planned rotations were under way.

There is fighting in and around the city, the United States-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said, warning that Ukrainian supply routes were narrowing.

“The Russians may have intended to encircle Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian command has signalled that it will likely withdraw rather than risk an encirclement,” said the ISW on Saturday.

Ukraine and Russia have, since summer, fought fiercely for the city, whose symbolic importance has surpassed its military significance.

On Sunday, the Russian army hit a command centre of the Ukrainian forces’ Azov regiment in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian Defence Ministry said. The ministry did not elaborate on the attack in its daily update on what it terms as its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The Azov regiment, which has far-right and ultra-nationalist origins and is now a unit of Ukraine’s National Guard, garnered international attention for its resistance to the Russian siege of Mariupol’s vast steelworks in 2022.

Rivalries

Pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region posted a video purporting to show Wagner fighters in the suburbs north of Bakhmut, having taken control of the Stupki railway station.

Wagner, a private army headed by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, has taken centre stage in the fight for the city, which has exposed rivalries with Russia’s conventional forces.

On Friday, Mr Prigozhin said his fighters had “practically encircled” Bakhmut, and only one road was under Ukrainian control.

He has for weeks been publicising the advances of his men towards the eastern city.

Mr Prigozhin, who is a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, regularly posts videos of himself alongside mercenaries, on the ground or even in a fighter jet, in contrast to Russian generals criticised for shirking the front line.

In a rare exception, Russia on Saturday released a video of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu inspecting troops in front-line regions in Ukraine.

The Defence Ministry said he inspected an advance command post in the South Donetsk direction, without specifying exactly where or when.

Mr Shoigu was seen travelling in a helicopter and talking to a soldier in front of damaged buildings.

The ISW think-tank said he went there “likely to assess the extent of Russian losses around Vugledar and the possibility of a further offensive in this direction”.

A woman and two children were killed in Russian mortar shelling of a village in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office said on Sunday.

“Mortar shelling of Poniativka village in Kherson region. A private house was hit,” Mr Andriy Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Russian terrorists continue to kill civilians.”

Kherson was occupied by Russian troops from the early days of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine until its recapture by Kyiv’s forces in November.

Since its liberation, the city has regularly been shelled from Russian positions across the Dnipro River. AFP