Intense fighting has continued in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut as both Kyiv and Moscow seemingly struggle with ammunition shortages and mounting casualties.
Ukrainian forces still control the city despite the street fighting, the deputy mayor of Bakhmut, Oleksandr Marchenko, told BBC Radio 4. Though Russian forces are pounding the routes out of the city, they have publicly pleaded with Moscow for more supplies. Ukrainian troops said one woman was killed and two men were injured attempting to cross a makeshift bridge on Sunday.
The Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who controls the mercenary Wagner force that is leading the Russian offensive in Bakhmut, warned late on Saturday that if his men were forced to withdraw, it could lead to the collapse of the entire Russian frontline.
Prigozhin has complained that the Russian ministry of defence is not supporting Wagner’s efforts in terms of men and ammunition.
“If the private mercenary force Wagner retreats from Bakhmut, the whole front will crumble … to the Russian borders and maybe further,” said Prigozhin in a video address on Sunday. “Wagner is the cement … We are drawing the entire Ukrainian army on ourselves, breaking them and destroying them.”
A top Ukrainian commander, Volodymyr Nazarenko, described the situation in the city as “hell” in an interview with Ukraine’s Kyiv24 on Sunday, but said they had stabilised the frontline and that Russian forces were still on the outskirts.
Nazarenko said that Russian forces lacked ammunition and were shelling the city chaotically. But, likewise, Ukrainian forces told the BBC in February that they were also running out of firepower.
Russian forces now occupy areas on three sides of the city to the east, north and south – and there is only one road connecting the city with Ukrainian-controlled territory. However, the Washington-based thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, said the Russians were unlikely to be able to encircle the city soon as their advances were still “slow and gradual”.
Western military analysts have been predicting that Ukraine would order a tactical withdrawal from Bakhmut, to stem losses and regroup. But the Ukrainian military insisted they were staying put, with spokesperson for the east, Serhiy Cherevatyi, denying on Saturday that they were planning to withdraw in an interview with CNN.
It is not clear to what extent Ukraine feels it can wear out Russian forces or if it is biding time to carry out a tactical retreat. Tactical retreats are tricky and secretive operations that will likely still cost Ukrainian lives. It would also place two new Ukrainian-controlled towns west of Bakhmut – Konstantinovka and Kramatorsk – on the frontline.
There have been signs that Ukraine is preparing for a retreat, with videos emerging over the last few weeks of destroyed bridges on the Ukrainian-controlled side.
Russia set its sights on conquering the city last summer and has gradually inched towards the town. Prigozhin’s Wagner forces were able to increase their efforts in October after recruiting thousands of Russian prisoners with the promise of freedom in exchange for six months of service.
Thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have been killed and injured in the battle for Bakhmut, and military analysts and Ukrainian forces have said it would serve as a symbolic victory for Russia if they took the city after a string of defeats last year.
Since beginning its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russian forces have conquered territory in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions – collectively known as the Donbas – kilometres at a time, pushing their way through by pummelling the areas with their larger artillery stockpiles.
Videos from Bakhmut in the past week show many buildings charred, collapsed or without windows. The few thousand civilians still living in the town have been confined to living in basements for months with no running water, electricity or gas.
Other fought-over towns in the area have been completely erased from the map. Drone footage published last week of Marinka, a town that used to border the 2014 frontline, and is located south of Bakhmut, showed the town had been reduced to rubble.
