Russia presses for a badly needed win in the battle for Ukraine’s Bakhmut
Russian soldiers are pummeling eastern Ukraine’s Bakhmut with artillery as they edge closer in an attempt to seize the city, which has remained in Ukrainian hands despite Moscow’s goal of capturing the entire Donbas region bordering Russia.
While much of the fighting in the last month has unfolded in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, the battle heating up around Bakhmut demonstrates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of clear setbacks.
The capture of Bakhmut would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province. Pro-Moscow separatists have controlled part of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province since 2014.
Before invading Ukraine, Putin recognized the independence of the Russian-backed separatists’ self-proclaimed republics. Last month, he illegally annexed Donetsk, Luhansk and two other provinces that Russian forces occupied or mostly occupied.
Russia has battered Bakhmut with rockets for more than five months. The ground assault accelerated after its troops forced the Ukrainians to withdraw from Luhansk in July. The line of contact is now on Bakhmut’s outskirts. Mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge.
Russia’s prolonged drive for Bakhmut exposes Moscow’s “craziness,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a nightly address to the nation.
Bodies of Russian soldiers lie in the streets of Lyman after their comrades’ retreat from the city, the latest in a series of setbacks for Moscow.
“Day after day, for months, they have been driving people there to their deaths, concentrating the maximum power of artillery strikes there,” Zelensky said this week.
The shelling killed at least three people between Wednesday and Thursday, according to local authorities. Four more died between Thursday and Friday in the Donetsk region, the province’s governor reported, as Russian troops pressed their attacks on Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a small city about 55 miles to the south that also remains under Ukrainian control.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said the civilian population is suffering.
“Civilians who remain in the region live in constant fear without heating and electricity,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. “Their enemy is not only Russian cannons but also the cold.”
Russia needs a victory in Bakhmut, given its loss of control over large swaths of the northeastern region of Kharkiv to a Ukrainian counteroffensive last month and its deteriorating position in Kherson. The areas were among the first the Russian military captured after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
When Russian troops crossed from Belarus into Ukraine in late February, pressing toward Kyiv, they were ordered to block and destroy ‘nationalist resistance.’
“Russia’s suffering defeats across the board. ... They need the optics of some kind of an offensive victory to assuage critics at home and to show the Russian public that this war is still going to plan,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank based in London.
The Wagner Group has played a prominent role in the war, and human rights organizations have accused its soldiers-for-hire of committing atrocities. Their deployment around Bakhmut reflects the city’s strategic importance to Moscow. However, it’s unclear if the mercenaries have made many tangible gains, Ramani said.
“We’re seeing a situation where the Wagner Group is quite effective at creating terror amongst the local residents but much less effective at actually capturing and holding territory,” he said. At the very best they’re advancing slightly more than half a mile a week toward Bakhmut, he said.
While in the city this week, journalists from the Associated Press saw burned-out cars, destroyed buildings and people struggling to survive amid constant shelling. Bakhmut has been without electricity or water for a month, and residents worry about heating their homes as temperatures drop.
Independent media outlets, human rights activists and the draftees themselves have painted a bleak picture of Russia’s partial military mobilization.
“We hoped that this [war] would end or that we would have conditions that allow us to live. But since last month, conditions have been terrible,” resident Leonid Tarasov said.
Few shops are open. The AP saw people using firewood to cook on the streets and drawing water from wells.
Bakhmut had a population of about 73,000 before the war, but about 90% of residents have left the city, according to Kyrylenko.
Some of those who remained asked in recent days to be evacuated from areas that have become too dangerous for volunteers or soldiers to get to, said Roman Zhylenkov, a volunteer with the local aid group Vostok-SOS.
Ukrainian authorities are claiming increasing success in shooting down Iranian-built drones launched by Russia to terrorize the public.
Others feel trapped.
“People who left moved to stay with their children or brothers and sisters. They had places to go,” Ilona Ierhilieieva said as she made soup on an open fire by the side of the road. “As for us, we don’t have a place to go. That’s why we are here.”
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