A bitter battle raged on Sunday in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where a Russian paramilitary leader said Ukrainian forces were defending “every street, every house, every stairwell” as they desperately tried to deny Moscow its first significant battlefield success in months.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, its armed forces helped direct Russia’s brutal campaign in Bakhmutdenied reports on social media that Ukrainian troops were withdrawing from the city.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are not retreating anywhere,” Mr. Prigozhin said in one opinion posted by one of his companies on Telegram, the social messaging app. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine are fighting to the last.”
Since last summer, Russian troops have been bombing Bakhmut, a town of once 70,000 people in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region that President Vladimir V Putin has ordered his troops to take entirely.
In recent weeks, Send more troops to the Donbass and intensify artillery attacks, Russia has steadily surrounded Bakhmut on three sides, cutting off many of the roads leading in and out of the city. This leaves Ukrainian forces with a westbound road as the last major line of supply — or a potential escape route.
“Bakhmut is increasingly isolated,” UK Defense Intelligence said reported on Sunday.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Saturday evening called the situation in Bakhmut and other parts of the east “very difficult” and said Russia was “throwing in more and more of its forces to break our defenses”.
Ukraine also has a large military presence in the Bakhmut area, with large troop carriers and armored vehicles crowding the streets. But some Ukrainian soldiers stationed there have become increasingly pessimistic about the city’s fate amid ongoing Russian attacks. They’re killing Russians, a soldier recently told the New York Times, but not fast enough.
Three people were killed in Russian attacks in Bakhmut on Saturday, the head of the regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Telegram. A fourth was killed in the Yampol settlement to the north, he said.
On Sunday morning, Russian troops attacked a school in the town of Druzhkivka, west of Bakhmut, which Ukrainian soldiers were apparently using as a base. An explosion tore out window frames and damaged the facade of the building. Another missile hit a condominium complex directly across from the school, blasting a large hole through the first floor and cutting through a row of apartments.
According to local authorities, five residents were injured during the strikes.
Still, Ukraine’s defenses at Bakhmut have attracted a significant Russian force, pinning them down and preventing them from deploying on other fronts amid warnings that Moscow is preparing to unleash a broader offensive. Mr. Zelensky declared on Friday that the city was “our stronghold” and swore: “No one will give Bakhmut away.”
In northeastern Ukraine, four people were injured in a Russian missile attack on the center of Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, regional officials said on Sunday.
Michael Schwartz And Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.
