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Ukraine has decided to fight in the ruined city of Bakhmut because the war was pinning down the best units of Russia and degrading them ahead of the planned spring Ukrainian counter-offensive, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
The comments by Mykhailo Podolyak are the latest signal of Kyiv’s shift this week to continue its defense of the small eastern city, the site of the bloodiest battle as Moscow tries to secure its first victory in more than half a year.
“Russia has changed its tactics,” Podolyak said in an interview published by Italian newspaper La Stampa. “It has converged in Bakhmut with a large part of its trained military personnel, the remnants of its professional army, as well as private companies.”
“Thus, we have two objectives: to reduce the personnel as much as possible, and to fix in some annoying battles, interrupt the attack and concentrate our resources elsewhere, for the spring counter-offensive. So, today. Bakhmut is really effective, even beyond the main task.
Russia has made Bakhmut the main target of future attacks involving hundreds of thousands of reservists and mercenaries. It has succeeded in capturing the eastern part of the city and the suburbs in the north and south, but so far it has not been able to close the ring around the Ukrainian defender there.
Ukrainians stay with Bakhmut
Kyiv, which appeared at the beginning of March to be planning to withdraw to positions west of the city, announced earlier this week that the generals had decided to reinforce their forces in Bakhmut and continue the fight.
In a morning update, the Ukrainian general staff reported more attacks on the front and said “the enemy has not stopped the attack on Bakhmut.”
Moscow says capturing Bakhmut will be a step towards seizing all of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial region, its main goal. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that capturing the city would blow holes in Ukrainian defenses and allow Moscow to advance deeper.
Intense trench warfare, described by both sides as a meat grinder, resulted in heavy losses. But Kyiv’s decision to stay and fight rather than retreat is a sign that Russia’s losses are worse than its own.
After making gains in the second half of 2022, Ukrainian forces have been mostly on the defensive since mid-November, while Russia has gone on the offensive with troops called up in the first mobilization since World War II.
Kyiv is waiting in arms
But apart from around Bakhmut, the Russian winter offensive largely failed. Meanwhile, Kyiv is awaiting an expected surge in Western military aid in the coming months to attack when the muddy ground dries up in late spring.
Kyiv and the West also saw signs of fatigue in Russia’s latest mass missile attack on Ukrainian targets.
Russia fired hundreds of millions of dollars worth of missiles at Ukraine on Thursday, including an unprecedented six hypersonic kinzhal missiles, which it says are a superweapon that NATO has no answer to. It is believed to have only a few dozen kinzhals.
The barrage killed civilians, including a family buried in the rubble as they slept in their homes near Lviv, 700 kilometers from the battlefield. But otherwise, it appears to be little, with damaged power systems usually being restored quickly.
The worst damage was seen in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where the regional governor said about 500,000 people were still without power as of Friday morning.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank, said that “this missile attack will not undermine Ukraine’s will or improve Russia’s position on the front lines.”
It has been three weeks since the same Russian attack, the longest since the attacks began in October. Previously, Moscow had launched such attacks roughly weekly, challenging Ukraine’s ability to repair its infrastructure before the next attack.
Britain’s defense ministry said on Friday that the reason may be that Moscow has run out of missiles and now has to wait between barrages for factories to produce them.
“The interval between the attack waves is probably large because Russia now has to stockpile a critical mass of newly produced missiles directly from the industry before it can attack resources large enough to be credible beyond the air defense of Ukraine,” he said.
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