The Sunday Mail
Russian artillery pounded the last routes out of Bakhmut on Friday, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged Ukrainian city and bring Moscow closer to its first major victory in half a year after the bloodiest battle of the war.
The head of Russia’s Wagner private army said the city, which has been blasted to ruins in Russia’s more than seven-month onslaught, was almost completely surrounded with only one road still open for Ukraine’s troops.
Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city.
A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was damaged by Russian tank shelling.
Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline in a sign that Ukraine was not yet ready to give up the city.
To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.
Russia’s RIA state news agency released a video showing what it said were Wagner fighters walking by a damaged industrial facility.
One fighter is heard saying Ukraine’s army is destroying infrastructure in settlements near Bakhmut to prevent the Russian encirclement.
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, visited Bakhmut on Friday for briefings with local commanders on how to boost the defence capacity of frontline forces.
Denys Yaroslavskyi, commander of a Ukrainian army unit at Bakhmut, told Espreso TV that parts of some units had been ordered to rotate to more secured positions, describing the situation since the morning as “a slaughterhouse on both sides”.
A Russian victory in Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of about 70 000, would give it the first major prize of a winter offensive, after it called up hundreds of thousands of reservists last year.
Russia says it would be a stepping stone to completing the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of Moscow’s most important objectives.
Before the war, Bakhmut was known for salt and gypsum mines.
‘Pincers are closing’
“Units of the private military company Wagner have practically surrounded Bakhmut,” Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video that Reuters determined was filmed on a rooftop in a village some seven kilometres north of the city centre.
“Only one route (out) is left,” he said.
“The pincers are closing.”
He called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a retreat from Bakhmut to save his soldiers’ lives.
The camera panned to show three captured Ukrainians – a grey-bearded older man and two boys – asking to be allowed to go home.
Robert Brovdi, the commander of a Ukrainian drone unit active in Bakhmut who goes by the name “Madyar”, said in a video posted on social media that his unit had been ordered to withdraw immediately. He said he had been fighting there for 110 days.
Volodymyr Nazarenko, a deputy commander in the National Guard of Ukraine, told Ukrainian NV Radio the situation was “critical”, with fighting “round the clock”. — Reuters
