Kyiv shows his confidence for the battle of Bakhmout. Ukraine said on Thursday it hopes to “take advantage very soon” of Russian fatigue in the city, the epicenter of fighting in the east of the country and where Russian forces, with the Wagner paramilitary group in the front line, have suffered significant losses.
“The aggressor is not desperate to take Bakhmout at all costs, despite the losses in men and equipment,” Ukrainian ground forces commander Oleksandre Syrsky said on Telegram.
Russian troops mobilized en masse in and around Bakhmout “are losing considerable strength and are running out,” he said.
“Very soon we will seize this opportunity, as we have done in the past near kyiv, Kharkiv, Balaklya and Kupyansk,” he added, citing previous Ukrainian military victories.
The “superhuman bravery” of Ukrainian soldiers
General Syrsky once again praised the “superhuman courage and superhuman bravery” of the Ukrainian army in the face of the Russian invasion.
These statements come the day after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s second visit in three months to this area of intense fighting, where he was “on the front line” together with Ukrainian soldiers. On Thursday, the Ukrainian president visited this time Kherson, a city in the south of the country seized from Russia last November.
The Russian army, with the Wagner paramilitary group, now encircles Bakhmout from the north, east and south, making it difficult to supply soldiers from kyiv.
But they resist, at the cost of heavy losses also on the Ukrainian side, a strategy assumed by the Kiev military command that aims at a war of attrition, wearing down the Russians, before an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive soon.
Bakhmout, Putin’s priority target
If experts question the strategic importance of the city of Bakhmout, Moscow would like to announce a military victory, after several humiliating setbacks last summer and fall that led Russian President Vladimir Putin to mobilize several hundred thousand reservists. , therefore civilians, then appoint a new commander in charge of operations in Ukraine.
The city of Bakhmout, which had 70,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion launched in February 2022, is now completely destroyed and almost completely empty of civilian population.
Source: BFM TV
