Russian forces have made progress in their campaign to capture the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the focus of the war's longest ground battle, but their assault will be difficult to sustain without more significant personnel losses, British military officials said Saturday.
The U.K. Defence Ministry said in its latest assessment that paramilitary units from the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group have seized most of eastern Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city now marking the front line of the fighting.The mining city is located in Donetsk province, one of four regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last year.
Russian military bloggers and other pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts claimed Friday that Russian forces had entered a metal processing plant in northwestern Bakhmut. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, also referenced geolocated footage showing Russian forces within 800 meters of the AZOM plant, a heavily built-up and fortified complex.
The post did not clarify whether Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi was in Bakhmut at the time of the Facebook post, although he has made several visits to the city and other frontline hot spots in eastern Ukraine in the past month. In a Facebook post, Ukrenergo said scheduled blackouts remain in place in Kharkiv and Zhytomyr, as well as parts of the Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv regions. The company added that the situation in Zhytomyr was especially challenging, with some customers still without power.
Donetsk, where Bakhmut is located, has been the epicentre of the fighting in recent months, while Ukrainian-held parts of the Kherson region have seen daily shelling from Russian troops stationed across the Dnieper River.
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