Russia denied on Thursday night that Kiev had made inroads into the city of Bakhmut, the epicenter of fighting in eastern Ukraine, after reports about it were reported by various sources.
A Ukrainian military official had confirmed on Wednesday that his country’s forces launched counterattacks in Bakhmut, which forced the Russian forces to retreat in some locations, and pro-Moscow bloggers and the head of the “Wagner” group shared similar news.
The battle of Bakhmut, the destroyed city of which Russian forces control about 95 percent, is the longest and bloodiest since the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in February 2022.
“Individual announcements on Telegram about a breach at several points on the front line are completely unrelated to reality,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
It explained that its forces repelled several Ukrainian attacks on Thursday, and that the battles took place at night near Malinivka in the Donetsk region, and that the air force and artillery were involved.
“We are launching effective counterattacks. In some areas of the front, the enemy was unable to resist the attack of the Ukrainian defenders and withdrew to a distance of up to two kilometers,” the commander of the ground forces in the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Sersky, said via “Telegram” on Wednesday.
For her part, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Ghana Malyar also confirmed via “Telegram” that the Kiev forces “did not lose a single site in Bakhmut during the day.”
And on Tuesday, the head of “Wagner”, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is engaged in an open conflict with the Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the army soldiers of fleeing from their positions in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin had complained on previous occasions about the lack of ammunition, accusing the Russian military structure of deliberately causing this shortage, and threatening to withdraw from Bakhmut if the issue was not resolved.
Prigozhin confirmed again on Wednesday that his fighters do not receive sufficient supplies of ammunition, warning that if this continues, the Ukrainian forces will be able to “destroy Wagner” in Bakhmut.
He also warned that “the parties began to crack and collapse,” accusing the Russian General Staff of seeking to “artificially limit the combat capabilities” of his forces.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not comment on the reports about the withdrawal from sites near Bakhmut, stressing that its forces “continue to liberate the western parts” of the city, adding that “the general situation in the area of the special military operation is under control.”
Russian forces, especially the “Wagner” fighters, have gradually and slowly seized territory in Bakhmut in recent months, but Ukrainian resistance is still fierce in the west of the city.
And after the Ukrainian authorities confirmed weeks ago that preparations for a counterattack had been completed, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Thursday that his country needed more time to prepare for this attack.
“We are mentally ready,” Zelensky said in an interview with the British “BBC”, but “in terms of equipment, not all of it has arrived yet.”
“With what we have, we can go ahead and achieve success. But we will lose a lot of people. I think this is unacceptable. So we have to wait. We still need some extra time.”
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2023-05-12 00:00:41
