The spokesman for the president of Ukraine on Sunday denied that Volodymyr Zelensky had confirmed the capture of the city of Bakhmut by Russian forces, after ambiguous statements made on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan.
“The president denied the capture of Bakhmut,” Serguei Nykyforov said on the social network Facebook, quoted by the French agency AFP.
The dialogue with journalists took place at the end of a meeting between Zelensky and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the Hiroshima summit.
According to AFP, the question was as follows: “President Zelensky, is Bakhmut still in Ukrainian hands? The Russians say they have taken Bakhmut.”
“I don’t think so,” Zelensky replied, though according to the French news agency it was unclear whether he answered the first or second part of the question.
According to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform, Zelensky’s response, according to the presidential spokesman, referred to the issue of Russia’s claim to take Bakhmut, not whether Ukrainian forces still control the city.
He then turned to the journalist who had asked the question and said: “what you have to understand is that there is nothing, all the buildings are destroyed”.
“For now, Bakhmut only exists in our hearts. There is nothing,” he added, quoted by the Spanish agency EFE.
The US agency AP also reported that Zelensky said he believed the city had fallen, that it had been completely destroyed by the Russians and that it was only now entering the hearts of Ukrainians.
Zelensky also thanked the soldiers who fought against the Russian troops in Bakhmut for eight months.
“Our defenders in Bakhmut have done a good job and of course we appreciate the excellent work they have done,” he said.
Bakhmut’s takeover 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.
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 sides, who lost a large number of soldiers in eight months of fighting.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), based in Washington, considered that the Russian capture of the last remaining terrain in Bakhmut “is not significant from a tactical or operational point of view”.
Control of the area “does not give Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue offensive operations” or to “defend against possible Ukrainian counter-attacks,” added the ISW, which produces daily analyzes of the war in Ukraine.
Source: DN
