Russian forces “destroyed” the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while Ukraine’s military reported missile strikes in various parts of the country.
Zelensky said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities, specifically in the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Together, the provinces form Donbass, a sprawling industrial region bordering Russia that Putin has identified as a hotbed since the start of the war and where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.
Today, the Ukrainian army also reported attacks in other provinces: Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Lugansk, are the four regions that Putin claims are now Russian territory.
In Odessa, a major Black Sea port city to the west, drone strikes took place overnight, leaving much of the region without power, local government head Maxim Marchenko said.
The latest battles in the 9 1/2-month war have focused on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had annexed in late September.
The fighting indicates Russia’s difficulties in establishing control over these regions and Ukraine’s persistence in retaking them, reports the American Press (AP) news agency.
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time there is no living place in these areas that has not been damaged by shells and fire,” Zelensky said in his late-night video, citing villages that again found themselves at the point sights of Russian troops. .
“The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another town in Donbass that the Russian army had turned into ruins,” he said.
Zelensky did not specify what he meant by “destroyed” as some buildings remain standing and residents still roam the city streets, AP reports.
The Ukrainian General Staff reported missile attacks, about 20 airstrikes and 60 rocket attacks between Friday and Saturday in Ukraine.
Spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active clashes took place in the Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated places were attacked. He said Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks on Donetsk and neighboring Lugansk.
Russia’s eastern offensive managed to capture almost all of Luhansk during the summer. Donetsk escaped the same fate, and the Russian military in recent weeks has deployed manpower and resources around Bakhmut in an attempt to encircle the city, Ukrainian officials and analysts said.
After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, attacks have increased around Bakhmut, showing Putin’s commitment to visible gains after weeks of clear setbacks in Ukraine.
Taking Bakhmut would cut Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to advance towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.
Russia attacked Bakhmut with rockets for more than half the year. A ground attack soon followed, forcing Ukrainian troops to withdraw from Luhansk in July.
Some analysts have questioned Russia’s strategic logic in its relentless pursuit of Bakhmut and the surrounding area, which has also come under heavy shelling in recent weeks, and where Ukrainian authorities have reported some residents living in damp basements.
“The costs associated with six months of brutal, crushing, attrition-based fighting around Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage the Russians might gain from taking Bakhmut,” according to the Institute for the Study of Warfare, a ” think tank” based in Washington. , refers to a “post” published on Thursday in his account on the social network “Twitter”.
On Friday, Putin criticized recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said the 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine brokered by France and Germany had given Ukraine time to prepare for war with Germany and Russia this year. .
This deal was intended to defuse tensions after pro-Russian separatists seized territory in Donbass a year earlier, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that escalated into a war with Russia itself following the full-scale invasion on February 24 last.
Source: TSF
