Russian forces are ratcheting up pressure on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, pouring in waves of fighters in an effort to break Ukraine’s resistance and targeting its supply lines in a bloody campaign aimed at securing Moscow’s first significant battlefield victory in months.
Eleven months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, Bakhmut and surrounding areas have become an epicentre of fighting, their importance growing as both sides have added forces to the battle. It comes as Russia and Ukraine are each believed to be preparing for larger offensives as warmer spring temperatures arrive, and as Kyiv’s western allies try to rush armoured vehicles and other heavy weapons to the front.
Russia has intensified its effort to capture Bakhmut — which it sees as key to President Vladimir V. Putin’s objective of seizing the entire Donbas area in the east — after months of bombardment beginning in the summer yielded little progress. Civilians have streamed out of Bakhmut under Russian shelling, abandoning a city that before the war had a population of about 70,000, as the armies fought a series of battles in surrounding towns and villages.
Despite suffering setbacks elsewhere in eastern Ukraine and in the south, since last autumn Moscow’s troops edging towards Bakhmut from the east have gradually squeezed the city. This month, Russian forces took the salt mining town of Soledar, to the north. They have also cut off a road running north towards the town of Siversk.
To the south, Ukrainian soldiers who recently left the front line said that a paved road that had been their main supply route into Bakhmut was now within range of Russian artillery and tanks, though still in Ukrainian hands. This leaves Ukraine relying on a road west to the town of Chasiv Yar, itself the target of Russian attacks.
In past Donbas battles, Russia has aimed to encircle a city first, leaving Ukraine to decide whether to expend costly resources to defend it. The outcome of the battle for Bakhmut, however, remained unclear.
New York Times News Service
