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The Ukrainian army advanced in an attack near the eastern city of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian commander said on Friday, in a battle that has moved the front line only slightly but exposed fissures, confusion and alarm among the Russian forces in the war.
Russian pro-war bloggers were quick to claim that Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive had begun, but Ukrainian officials downplayed the progress and described it as more local. Ukrainian soldiers breached Russian lines south of Bakhmut on Wednesday, he said, and then exploited the breach, attacking Russian forces near the town and threatening Russian territory to the north and south. The first visible video posted by Ukrainian news outlet Channel 24, which it said was provided by Ukraine’s 77th Airmobile Brigade, showed the northern part of Bakhmut on fire on Friday evening.
Bakhmut has been at the center of the fighting in eastern Ukraine for months: a largely destroyed city where tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have died, and the only place more than hundreds of miles ahead where Russia is constantly attacking. That changed this week, when Ukraine put Russian troops on the defensive, giving it a tough strategic decision to fortify the city and sparking new recriminations among Russian commanders.
A video released on Friday by Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade shows soldiers climbing out of an armored personnel carrier and storming a Russian trench. “Go ahead, go ahead!” the soldier shouted in the video, filmed on a helmet camera. The soldiers dived for cover as Russian fighters threw hand grenades, then ran forward and threw their own grenades into the Russian bunker. The video could not be independently verified.
“The defensive phase of the battle for Bakhmut is over,” said Andriy Biletsky, who commands the brigade, among other units in the Ukrainian Army. Now, he said, Ukraine will increase pressure on Russia from the north and the south.
“We advanced a little more on our flank,” said a drone operator in the Adam Tactical Group, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Sem. In an interview on Friday, he described the overnight seesaw battle south of Bakhmut, where Russian troops tried to seize positions but were repulsed by Ukrainian artillery bombardment.
Another Ukrainian soldier, who identified his phone as Bandit, said the artillery and rocket fire circling the hills near Bakhmut was “all our fire on the Russian side.”
“We are still studying the enemy and want to see what they do in this situation,” he said, adding that Ukrainian soldiers were testing Russian positions and “clearing the forest belt one by one.”
The retreat from Bakhmut, a city of no strategic importance but already a symbolic prize, would be a humiliating setback for the Russian military. Russia has not taken the Ukrainian city since last July, and has pressed ahead to Bakhmut despite soaring losses.
It is difficult to measure whether Ukraine’s progress will be sustained. Russian forces have at one point flushed Ukrainian forces out of all but a few city blocks.
Ukrainian advances this week have broken the Russian line on the largest bulge by only about three miles, but the success undoes what Moscow’s forces have been working on for months.
That gives Russia a tough choice. If Russia does not strengthen its flanking position around Bakhmut, it risks a political setback. But moving reserve forces into the city could undermine defenses in the south, where many analysts expect Ukraine to attack the Sea of Azov in an attempt to cut off supply routes to occupied Crimea.
Ukrainian officials did not describe the attack as the start of an anticipated counterattack. President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview with the BBC this week, said Ukraine wanted more weapons and ammunition to arrive before launching an offensive.
The stakes of the attack on Ukraine extend to the country’s efforts to secure more aid: A military breakthrough can persuade Western officials to send even more material, while failure or stalemate can push them to curtail support or encourage negotiations. Europe’s foreign minister asked China’s top diplomat this week for Beijing to do more to end the war, and China, which has been a potential mediator while offering Russia diplomatic and economic aid, announced envoys will visit Ukraine and Russia next week.
So Ukrainian leaders, aware of their dependence on Western support, have tried to distinguish the new attacks from wider attacks. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, this week described Ukraine’s actions as largely defensive, but said the soldiers were able to “conduct an effective counterattack.”
“In some areas of the front, the enemy could not withstand the attack of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated up to two kilometers,” he said in a statement.
But Russian military bloggers have reacted with alarm to Kyiv’s gains near Bakhmut. The blogger, who often reports from the front and has links to various commanders or mercenary groups Wagner, is very pro-war and can influence Russia, urging Moscow to commit more resources to the war.
“Wagner gave a lot of blood and sweat to this region, some gave his life,” wrote Aleksandr Yaremchuk, a Russian military correspondent aligned with Wagner, whose fighters have led a nearly year-long battle for Bakhmut. “It’s hard for me to believe that other units are leaving their positions so easily.”
The objection drew the attention of Russia’s Defense Ministry, which on Friday said its forces were withdrawing in one of the areas around Bakhmut.
Wagner’s head, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, appeared to support the bloggers’ assessment. On Thursday, he sent an open letter to Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, about the losses in the flanking positions, saying that “the enemy carried out several successful counterattacks.”
The posts, videos and statements also show tensions and divisions between different Russian forces in Ukraine. Mr. Prigozhin, who has been an aggressive critic of Mr. Shoigu and other top defense officials, this week issued a series of expletive-laden audio and video messages, including comments that some observers interpreted as his first direct criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin. from Russia.
Cracks are also visible elsewhere, as Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whose paramilitary forces have fought alongside Wagner in Ukraine, criticized Mr Prigozhin, a longtime ally, in a broadside video.
Some prominent Russian pro-war bloggers have warned that the hostilities are beginning to affect battlefield performance at crucial times.
“Not a single commandment is respected without exception,” wrote one of the bloggers, Anastasia Kashevarova. “We have a lot of people in front of us, and no one can agree.”
“The enemy,” he added, “use this.”
This reporting was contributed by Anatoly Kurmanaev, Maria Varenikova, Riley Mellen, Ishaan Jhaveri and Dmitry Khavin.
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