Ukraine controls only a third of the city of Bakhmut, the scene of particularly deadly fighting for months in the country’s east, Ukrainian presidency adviser Serguii Leschenko said on Thursday.
“Only a third of Bakhmut is controlled by Ukraine, as determined by international observers,” the adviser stated in a briefing broadcast on the presidency’s Telegram account.
Despite this, Leschenko has denied that the city has been surrounded by Russian troops, as a pro-Russian official from eastern Ukraine recently claimed.
The leader of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said ten days ago that his men, who were on the front lines of this battle, controlled “about 70%” of Bakhmut.
This information had not previously been confirmed by the Ukrainian authorities.
The duration of the battle and the heavy casualties suffered by both sides made this pre-war city of about 70,000 inhabitants a symbol of the struggle between Russians and Ukrainians for control of the industrial region of Donbass.
In recent months, troops from Moscow have moved north and south of the city, blocking several Ukrainian supply routes and seizing the eastern part.
The Ukrainian army, for its part, announced that the situation on the ground has “stabilised” and hopes to take advantage of Russian exhaustion to launch a counter-offensive “very soon”.
Source: DN
