‘What madness looks like’: Russia intensifies Bakhmut attack

“Everything is completely destroyed. There are almost no lives left,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday of the scene around Bakhmut and the nearby Donetsk province town of Soledar.

Zelensky said, “The whole land near Soledar is covered with the bodies of the occupiers and the marks of the attacks.” “It looks like madness.”

The Kremlin, whose neighboring country was invaded 10 1/2 months ago and has faced several setbacks, is hungry for victory. Russia Illegally captured Donetsk and three other Ukrainian provinces in September, but its troops have struggled to advance.

After Ukrainian forces captured the southern city of Kherson in November, fighting heated up around Bakhmut.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said Russia had thrown “a large number of stormtrooper groups” into the battle for the city. , killing his own soldiers,” he said.

Pavlo Kirilenko, the Kyiv-appointed governor of the Donetsk region, on Tuesday described the Russian offensive on Soledar and Bakhmut as relentless.

“The Russian military is reducing Ukrainian cities to rubble using all kinds of weapons in its scorched earth strategy,” Kirilenko said in televised remarks. “Russia is waging a war without rules, resulting in civilian deaths and suffering.”

Wounded soldiers receive round-the-clock access to emergency treatment Ukrainian Medical stabilization center near the front line around Bakhmut. Medics fought for 30 minutes on Monday to save a soldier, but his injuries were too serious.

Another soldier was hit in the head after his helmet was hit. Medics quickly stabilized him for transfer to a military hospital.

“We fight to the end to save a life,” Kostyantin Vasilkevich, a surgeon and the center’s coordinator, told The Associated Press.

The Moscow-backed leader of the occupied regions of Donetsk said on Tuesday that Russia’s forces were “very close” to taking Soledar. But the gains were coming “at a very high cost”, Denis Pushilin told Russian state TV.

Control of the city would create “good prospects” for Bakhmut, as well as a city in the north, where Ukrainian fortifications are “quite serious,” Pushilin said.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense concurred with that assessment of the war’s development. Russian troops, along with troops from Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, have advanced into Soledar and are “likely to take control of most of the settlement,” the ministry tweeted on Tuesday.

It said that taking Soledar, 10 kilometers (6 mi) north of Bakhmut, was Moscow’s immediate military objective and part of a strategy to encircle Bakhmut. But it added that “Ukrainian forces maintain stable defensive lines in depth and control of supply routes”.

The leader of the Wagner Group, Dmitry Prigozin, confirmed in a post on a Russian social media platform on Tuesday that his forces were fighting in the area and acknowledged “heavy fighting” in Soledar against a Ukrainian force he said showed “bravery”. fights with.”

A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Wagner Group “has moved from a niche side of Russia’s war to a major component of the conflict,” adding that its forces now make up a quarter of Russian combatants. Is equal to.

British intelligence reports state that an extraordinary feature of the fighting near Bakhmut is that some of it took place around the entrance to disused salt mine tunnels, which run for some 200 kilometers (120 mi).

It added, “There is concern on both sides that (the tunnels) could be used for infiltration behind their border.”

In Russia, two signs emerged on Tuesday that authorities are grappling with military shortcomings revealed during the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, whose performance has been strongly criticized in some Russian circles but who has retained the confidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that his military would use its experience in Russia. ukraine To improve combat training.

Shoigu said military communications and control systems would be improved using artificial intelligence and soldiers would be given better tactical gear and equipment.

Other signs of trouble include Russia’s production of weapons and other supplies for its military needs for the fight in Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, warned that officials who failed to meet deadlines for such items could face criminal charges.

Putin last month appointed Medvedev to head a new commission trying to resolve the army’s supply problems. Several reports have suggested that Russia is running low on some weapons and is sending some troops into battle with inadequate equipment and clothing.

Part of the Kremlin’s challenge is keeping up with the weapons and supplies that Western allies are providing to Ukraine.

The Patriot surface-to-air guided missile defense system is one of the weapons Ukraine is about to receive, and the Pentagon announced Tuesday that about 100 Ukrainian troops will begin training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma as soon as next week. This will help Ukraine to protect itself from Russian missile attacks. The United States promised a Patriot battery last month, and Germany promised an additional system.

Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Bierbock, visiting Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, announced on Tuesday that her country would also provide 40 million euros to help with mining, energy infrastructure and internet connections, German news agency dpa reported. ($43 million).

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that NATO members “have become one side in the conflict, pumping weapons, technology and intelligence data into Ukraine.”

Fierce fighting has been witnessed in several front-line cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in recent months.

Together, the provinces make up the Donbass, a vast industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focus from the start of the war and where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.

During the summer the Russians’ fierce eastern offensive captured almost the whole of Luhansk. Donetsk escaped the same fate, and the Russian army subsequently poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut.

The capture of Bakhmut would disrupt Ukraine’s supply lines and open a path for Russian forces to advance towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.

Like Mariupol and other disputed towns, Bakhmut endured a long siege without water and electricity even before Moscow launched a large-scale offensive to disconnect public utilities across Ukraine.

Kirilenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, estimated more than two months ago that 90% of Bakhmut’s pre-war population of more than 70,000 had fled since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbass.

Ukraine’s presidential office said at least four civilians were killed and another 30 wounded in Russian shelling between Monday and Tuesday.

The governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, Vitaly Kim, said the Russian military shelled the port of Ochakiv and its surrounding area late on Monday and again in the early hours of Tuesday. He said 15 people, including a two-year-old child, were injured.

The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification. Only the headline has been changed.