Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted on Sunday that Russian troops are in Bakhmut, but despite Moscow saying it controls the city, he insisted that this city in eastern Ukraine “is not occupied”.
“Today they are in Bakhmut,” Zelensky admitted at a press conference during the G7 summit in Hiroshima, adding that the city is “not occupied by Russia.”
“I cannot share the tactical views of our army. The hardest thing would be if a tactical error had been made in Bakhmut and our people were surrounded,” the Ukrainian president said, contradicting the Russians, who announced on Saturday that they were completely captured had taken the city after a long battle.
Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, also came out to talk about the partial siege of Bakhmut by Ukrainian forces after Russia claimed a full takeover of the eastern Ukrainian city.
“The advance of our troops to the flanks in the suburbs, which is still ongoing, makes the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut very difficult,” Maliar said on the Telegram social network, quoted by the French agency AFP.
“Our troops have partially surrounded the city, which gives us the opportunity to destroy the enemy. Therefore, the enemy must defend in the part of the city it controls.”he added, according to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
The total capture of Bakhmut was announced on Saturday by the head of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojin.
The information was later confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Defense and welcomed by President Vladimir Putin.
Already today, in a statement quoted by the official TASS agency, the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed “the liberation of the city of Artemovsk”, using the Russian name Bakhmut.
In Hiroshima, where he traveled to participate in the summit of the seven most industrialized democracies (G7), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an ambiguous answer to a question about Bakhmut.
Initially, Zelensky’s response was interpreted as an admission of Bakhmut’s loss, but his spokesman later clarified that the Ukrainian leader had said he believed the city was not yet under full Russian control.
“For now, Bakhmut only exists in our hearts. There is nothing there,” Zelensky added after meeting his American counterpart, Joe Biden, in the western Japanese city.
The Ukrainian army also still does not consider the city lost in the operational assessment released today.
“In the Bakhmut axis, the enemy continues offensive operations and fighting for the city continues,” Ukraine’s general staff said today, quoted by Spain’s Europa Press agency.
Information about the course of the war released by the two sides cannot immediately be independently confirmed.
Located 55 kilometers from the capital of the Donetsk region, Bakhmut had a population of about 80,000 before the war by Russia started on February 24, 2022.
Despite not being considered a strategic city, the Battle of Bakhmut took on symbolic significance for both Ukrainians and Russians, who lost a large number of soldiers in eight months of fighting.
The battle for Bakhmut has been hailed as the longest and bloodiest in Russia’s war against Ukraine, with an outcome yet to be determined, as is the case with the entire conflict.
Source: DN
