Ukrainian forces have continued to defend the besieged city of Bakhmut, as the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force said the position of his troops could be in peril because of their lack of ammunition.
The battle for Bakhmut, which is still under Kyiv’s control, has raged for seven months, with thousands of people killed and hundreds of buildings collapsed or charred. The few remaining civilians have been confined to basements for months with no running water, electricity or gas.
In spite of the rumours of an imminent retreat of his troops, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had instructed the army to find forces to bolster the defence of the embattled city.
“I told the Chief of Staff to find the appropriate forces to help the guys in Bakhmut. There is no part of Ukraine about which one can say that it can be abandoned,” Zelenskiy said in his evening address to the nation.
Earlier on Monday, Zelenskiy’s office said that Ukrainian generals had supported continuing Bakhmut’s defence.
After a series of meetings with Zelenskiy, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, “spoke in favour of continuing the defensive operation and further strengthening [Ukrainian] positions in Bakhmut,” Zelenskiy’s office said.
Intense street fighting has continued in and around the eastern Ukrainian city, with Kyiv and Moscow struggling with mounting casualties and ammunition shortages. Volodymyr Nazarenko, a senior Ukrainian commander, described the situation in the city as “hell” in an interview with Ukraine’s Kyiv24 on Sunday, but said Ukraine had stabilised the frontline and that Russian forces were still on the outskirts.
On Monday, the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who controls the mercenary group Wagner, said Russia’s frontlines near Bakhmut could collapse if his forces did not receive the ammunition promised by Moscow in February.
On Sunday, referring to the absence of ammunition, Prigozhin said in his press service Telegram channel: “For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal?”
The oligarch regularly criticises Russia’s defence chiefs and generals. Last month, he accused Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, and others of “treason” for withholding supplies of munitions to his forces.
In a nearly four-minute video published on the Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops were worried that the government wanted to set them up as possible scapegoats if Russia lost the war.
“If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse,” he said. “The situation will not be sweet for all military formations protecting Russian interests.”
Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, said on Monday that Bakhmut was of more symbolic than operational importance, and its fall would not necessarily mean that Moscow had regained the initiative in the war.
“I would say the Wagner forces have been a bit more effective than the Russian forces … Having said that, we have not seen exemplary performance from Russian forces,” Austin said.
According to the US-based Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces appeared to be “conducting a limited fighting withdrawal” in eastern Bakhmut but continued to inflict high casualties on the advancing Russian forces.
Though the thinktank says it is still too early to tell what Ukraine’s intentions are, the defence of Bakhmut “remains strategically sound” and it may be pursuing a “gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare”.
‘’Russian forces are unlikely to quickly secure significant territorial gains when conducting urban warfare, which usually favours the defender and can allow Ukrainian forces to inflict high casualties on advancing Russian units – even as Ukrainian forces are actively withdrawing,” the thinktank said.
Meanwhile, Shoigu was in Mariupol on Monday, in a rare visit to occupied Ukraine by a senior Moscow figure.
The Russian defence ministry issued images on Monday of Shoigu “inspecting Russian reconstruction efforts of infrastructure”. During his visit, it said, he saw a medical centre, a rescue centre and a “new microdistrict” of 12 five-storey residential buildings.
Shoigu’s visit to Ukraine began on Saturday, but the precise locations he has visited have been kept secret for security reasons.
In a separate development, Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reported that in the last 24 hours Russian troops had carried out 29 strikes on the Donetsk region and shelled 14 settlements in the region.
Additionally, on its Telegram channel, it posted: “In Lyman, a civilian was injured as a result of the detonation of a Russian mine.”
Suspilne also reported that overnight Russian troops launched a rocket attack on Kramatorsk and destroyed a school, and that 15 apartment buildings were also damaged.