[ad_1]
Russian forces spent nearly a year carving a path of destruction and death around the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, and in March they seemed close to success.
“The clamps are closed,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group that led Russia’s bloody attack.
He was wrong. Pincers never closed, and now the Ukrainian forces have pried them more open, taking back the north and south of the city destroyed in a few days that the Russians took many weeks to capture.
Moscow forces still hold most of Bakhmut themselves, the new Ukrainian gains around the city are not great, and there is no guarantee that they will stay. But for the first time in months, Ukrainian soldiers are on the offensive and the momentum in the longest and bloodiest war of the war seems to have shifted – at least for now.
The continued Ukrainian advance would reverse the situation of the past few months, leaving the Russians in Bakhmut at risk of being encircled and trapped, and would show that the line of fortifications built by the Russians in the Ukraine could be breached. Success around Bakhmut would also give a major morale boost to Ukraine and a serious blow to Russia, negating the only military achievement that has been visible in its hands for months.
A possible reversal of fortune comes when Ukraine is ready to mount a broader counteroffensive, aiming for a dramatic outcome in a war that has settled into a grueling slugfest, with much blood spilled but little ground gained. While the dynamics around Bakhmut are somewhat specific to the war, Ukrainian commanders say they hope to learn there as they try to strike elsewhere along the region. 600-mile front line.
“When you retreat, it’s very difficult to stop,” said Colonel Andriy Biletsky, commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, whose soldiers made the first breakthrough in Russian lines last week. “If you want to get ahead, it’s very difficult.”
He warned that he was waiting for “a chain of five, six, seven victories” before assessing the state of the war, but he was hopeful.
“We can say that the phase of blind defense near Bakhmut has passed and now at least there will be movement on both sides,” he said.
“The Wagners have entered Bakhmut like rats into a mousetrap,” the commander of all Ukrainian ground forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, told soldiers during a visit to the front on Tuesday.
General Syrskyi and other Ukrainian commanders warned that the battle was still fierce and a desperate battle was still being fought in Bakhmut, where Russian forces were trying to drive the last Ukrainian defenders from the ruins of the city. Five months after first fighting their way into the city, the Russians held about 90 percent.
“The enemy is advancing a bit on Bakhmut itself, destroying the city with artillery,” Hanna Mailar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said Tuesday night.
Ukrainian commanders want to keep a large Russian force in and around Bakhmut, preventing redeployment to other areas that could be attacked. He said Russia had sent reinforcements to the Bakhmut region, including new tank and fighter units, to try to stop the Ukrainian advance.
However, the Ukrainian commander said on Tuesday that his soldiers were moving forward.
Major Oleksandr Pantsyrny, commander of the 24th separate assault battalion “Aidar,” said that Ukraine has “regained the initiative on the sides, in the north and south of the city.”
Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst for Rochan Consulting, said that recent Ukrainian gains have exposed “fundamental weaknesses of Russia: lack of coordination between regular Russian formations and Wagner units, poor communication and morale.”
For months, Ukraine has insisted that before launching a counter-offensive, it needs a large number of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other weapons from its allies. Mr. Muzyka said that the Ukrainian gains around Bakhmut “do not use the main platforms provided by the West, such as Bradley IFV or Leopard tanks.”
Ukrainian forces advanced about two kilometers in several directions on Sunday and Monday, Colonel Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces fighting in the east, said on national television.
Without elaborating, he said the march progressed unevenly, with fierce fighting taking place in areas the size of three football fields in some locations. He also warned that Russian forces are still trying to counterattack in places.
While these claims cannot be independently verified, Russian military bloggers have also documented Ukraine’s gains in Bakhmut over the past week.
Southwest Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have been reported to advance through the pocket of the forest near the village of Ivanivske, and they are seen moving in the direction of Klishchiivka, a small village that Wagner claimed mercenary on January 19 after a week of fighting. .
The village was situated on high ground, and the army it occupied had a commanding position overlooking the important roads to Bakhmut.
To the northwest of the city, the army is seen fighting for control of the high ground around the Berkhiv Reservoir. Without mentioning the withdrawal, Russia’s Defense Ministry said over the weekend that its forces were gathering reservoirs to “increase the strength of the defense line.”
Colonel Cherevatyi said there had been 36 different “battles” between opposing armies across the city in the past two days and warned it was a fluid and dynamic situation.
Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut, a small town of limited strategic value, has been costly, with some of its most experienced soldiers killed in action there in the past year. But it has stopped the Russians from besieging the big cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Ukrainian officials say it also played a critical role in undermining the Russian military. As long as Russian losses outweigh Ukrainian losses, officials in Kyiv maintain, then the war makes sense from a battlefield math standpoint.
Now, the Ukrainians are not only absorbing the blow but moving forward, Ukrainian commanders and officials hope the calculus will change again and it will be up to the Russians to decide what price to pay to hold the city they have thrown. daily map.
Once a town of about 70,000 in the Donetsk region, famous for its wine and salt mines, Bakhmut has become a symbol of the ferocity of this war.
Ukrainian military officials insist that the current events around Bakhmut have only been partially successful.
As for the situation in the rest of the city, Ukrainian soldiers said that their commander only sent volunteers.
“Once you enter Bakhmut, you must know that you cannot get out,” said one of the soldiers. Bone weary and bleary-eyed, he didn’t give his name, as he sat under a bus stop near a dilapidated town.
His friend said, “Now it’s crazy in Bakhmut. The attack will not stop.”
Carlotta Gall contributed reports from Kyiv. Natalia Novosolova and Anastasia Kuznetsova contribute to research.
[ad_2]
Source link