December 10, 2022 5:17 pm | Updated December 11, 2022 1:37 PM IST – KYIV, Ukraine
Ukrainian military personnel carry weapons in Bakhmut as Russia’s assault on Ukraine continues in Donetsk region, Ukraine, December 9, 2022. | Photo credit: Reuters
Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while Ukrainian military on March 10 Airstrikes in several parts of the country which Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.
The Last Battles of Russia’s 9 1/2 month war in Ukraine have focused on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin has triumphantly – and illegally – claims to have attached End of September. The fighting shows Russia’s struggle to gain control of these regions and Ukraine’s persistence in retaking them.
Mr Zelenskyy said the situation remained “very difficult” in several towns on the front lines Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine provinces. Together, the provinces make up the Donbass, a sprawling industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a flashpoint from the start of the war and where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014.
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. There has long been no living space on the soil of these areas that have not been destroyed by shells and fire,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, naming cities that have come under the crosshairs again. “The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbass city that the Russian army turned into a burnt ruin.”
Mr. Zelenskyy did not specify what he meant by “destroyed” – and some buildings still stand and residents still roam the city’s streets.
Ukraine’s military general staff reported rocket attacks, some 20 airstrikes and more than 60 rocket attacks across Ukraine between Friday and Saturday. Spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active fighting took place in Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated places came under fire. He said Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.
Russia’s grueling eastern offensive managed to capture most of Luhansk in the summer. Donetsk has escaped the same fate, and the Russian military has poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut in recent weeks to encircle the city, analysts and Ukrainian officials said.
According to Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson Almost a month ago, the battle over Bakhmut heated up, demonstrating Putin’s desire for visible gains after weeks of sharp setbacks in Ukraine.
Taking Bakhmut would cut off Ukraine’s supply lines and open a path for Russian forces to advance towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the main Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Russia has been bombarding Bakhmut with rockets for more than half the year. A ground attack accelerated after his forces forced Ukrainians to withdraw from Luhansk in July.
However, some analysts have questioned Russia’s strategic logic in its relentless quest to capture Bakhmut and the surrounding areas, which have also been under intense shelling in recent weeks and where Ukrainian officials reported some residents were living in damp basements.
“The costs associated with six months of brutal, attrition-based and attrition-based fighting for #Bakhmut far outweigh any operational benefit the #Russians can derive from taking Bakhmut,” said the Institute for the Study of War , a Washington think tank, was posted to its Twitter feed on Thursday.
On Friday, Mr Putin lashed out at recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine brokered by France and Germany bought Ukraine time to prepare for a war with Russia this year.
That deal was aimed at cooling tensions after pro-Russian separatists seized areas in the Donbas a year earlier, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that escalated into a war with Russia itself following the February 24 full-scale invasion.
The Ukrainian military also reported strikes in other provinces on Saturday: Kharkiv and Sumy in the north-east, Dnepropetrovsk in central Ukraine, Zaporizhia in the south-east and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, are the four regions that Putin claims are now Russian territory.
In Odessa, a key Black Sea port city in the west, overnight drone strikes left much of the region without power, local government leader Maxim Marchenko said.
