The Ukrainians are preparing on Sunday for a counter-offensive which they say should not take long in the region of Bakhmout, a city in eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have been trying to take since the summer at the cost of heavy losses.
The Russian army is continuing its attacks in other regions at the same time: the authorities have announced that a strike in the morning left at least three dead and two injured in Kherson, a southern city liberated by the Kiev army in November after several months of occupation.
In Bakhmout, the current epicenter of the conflict, Evguéni Prigojine, the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner, claimed a new progression of his men who are fighting there on the front line.
“It’s the municipal administration building, the administrative center of the city,” he said on Saturday, pointing from the roof of a building to another building, as an illustration of this advanced.
“It’s a kilometer two hundred”, “It’s the area, there are fights in progress”, he added in a video broadcast by the press service of his company Concord, unverifiable remarks from an independent source immediately.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had the day before “repelled more than 100 enemy attacks” in the main combat zones.
A counter-offensive “is not far away”
On the same day, the British Ministry of Defense announced that “in the last four days” the Wagner Group had “taken control of most of the east” of Bakhmout.
“Ukrainian forces control the west of the city and have demolished key bridges over the river” which crosses it, the ministry said.
“The real heroes are the defenders who hold the eastern front on their shoulders,” for his part hailed the commander of the Ukrainian land forces Oleksandre Syrsky.
“We must gain time to accumulate reserves and launch a counter-offensive, which is not far away,” he said, quoted by the army press service.
“At the start of the war, we didn’t have drones. Missions were more complicated and less effective. But in the summer we started to receive drones and other equipment. Today, we are more efficient,” Petro, the pilot of one of three MI-8 attack helicopters which had just carried out a raid against a target near Bakhmout, told AFP.
Prigozhin’s mockery
The Russians have been trying for several weeks to encircle this city of some 70,000 inhabitants before the conflict and have succeeded in cutting off several important routes for the supply of Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanichyna conceded in an interview with the JDD that it “is becoming complicated for us to resist and deter” the forces in Bakhmout.
“We estimate that the Russian army has already lost 150,000 men since last year in its military offensives on our soil. The human mass of its infantry is a formidable weapon, it seems inexhaustible in volume and in time,” she said.
While observers doubt the strategic importance of Bakhmout in itself, this battle — the longest since the start of the Russian offensive more than a year ago — has acquired symbolic value, both for Kiev and for Moscow, which would like to obtain a victory there after several humiliating setbacks.
“The most important thing is to get the right amount of ammunition and to move forward,” Evgeny Prigojine hammered in his video, in open conflict with the Russian military hierarchy, in particular to obtain more ammunition.
He once again publicly attacked Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, ironically calling them “exceptional military leaders”.
“I absolutely, totally support all their efforts”, still mocked the one who continues to criticize the strategy of the hierarchy on the ground.