Zelenskyy denies Russia’s claim it has captured Bakhmut – National | 24CA News
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned Sunday that Russian forces weren’t occupying Bakhmut, casting doubt on Moscow’s insistence that the japanese Ukrainian metropolis had fallen.
Responding to a reporter’s query concerning the standing of town on the Group of Seven summit in Japan, Zelenskyy mentioned: “Bakhmut is not occupied by the Russian Federation as of today.”
“We are not throwing people (away) to die,” Zelenskyy mentioned in Ukrainian via an interpreter. “People are the treasure. I clearly understand what is happening in Bakhmut. I cannot share with you the technical details of what is happening with our warriors.”
The fog of warfare made it inconceivable to substantiate the scenario on the bottom within the invasion’s longest battle, and a sequence of feedback from Ukrainian and Russian officers added confusion to the matter.
Zelenskyy’s response in English to a query earlier on the summit concerning the standing of Bakhmut instructed that he believed town had fallen to Russian forces, and he supplied solemn phrases about its destiny.
When requested if town was in Ukraine’s arms, Zelenskyy mentioned: “I think no, but you have to — to understand that there is nothing, They’ve destroyed everything. There are no buildings. It’s a pity. It’s tragedy.”
“But, for today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing on this place, so — just ground and — and a lot of dead Russians,” he mentioned.
Zelenskyy’s press secretary later walked again these earlier feedback.
Ukrainian protection and army officers mentioned that fierce preventing was ongoing. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar even went as far as to say that Ukrainian troops “took the city in a semi-encirclement.”
“The enemy failed to surround Bakhmut, and they lost part of the dominant heights around the city,” Malyar mentioned. “That is, the advance of our troops in the suburbs along the flanks, which is still ongoing, greatly complicates the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”
And the spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, Serhii Cherevaty, mentioned that the Ukrainian army is managing to carry positions within the neighborhood of Bakhmut.
“The president accurately mentioned that town has, in reality, been razed to the bottom. The enemy is being destroyed daily by large artillery and aviation strikes, and our models report that the scenario is extraordinarily troublesome.
“Our military keep fortifications and several premises in the southwestern part of the city. Heavy fighting is underway,” he mentioned.
It was solely the newest flip-flopping of the scenario in Bakhmut after eight months of intense preventing.
Only hours earlier, Russian state new businesses reported that President Vladimir Putin congratulated “Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk,” which is Bakhmut’s Soviet-era title.
Russia’s Defense Ministry additionally mentioned that Wagner and army models “completed the liberation” of Bakhmut.
At the G-7 in Japan, Zelenskyy stood facet by facet with U.S. President Joe Biden throughout a news convention. Biden introduced $375 million extra in support for Ukraine, which included extra ammunition, artillery and automobiles.
“I thanked him for the significant financial assistance to (Ukraine) from (the U.S.),” Zelenskyy tweeted later.
The new pledge got here after the U.S. agreed to permit coaching on American-made F-16 fighter jets, laying the groundwork for his or her eventual switch to Ukraine. Biden mentioned Sunday that Zelenskyy had given the U.S. a “flat assurance” that Ukraine wouldn’t use the F-16s jets to assault Russian territory.
Many analysts say that even when Russia was victorious in Bakhmut, it was unlikely to show the tide within the warfare.
The Russian seize of the final remaining floor in Bakhmut is “not tactically or operationally significant,” a Washington-based suppose tank mentioned late Saturday. The Institute for the Study of War mentioned that taking management of those areas “does not grant Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations,” nor to “to defend against possible Ukrainian counterattacks.”
In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin mentioned town got here below full Russian management at about noon Saturday. He spoke surrounded by a few half-dozen fighters, with ruined buildings within the background and explosions heard within the distance.
Russian forces nonetheless search to grab the remaining a part of the Donetsk area nonetheless below Ukrainian management, together with a number of closely fortified areas.
It isn’t clear which facet has paid the next value within the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be within the hundreds, although neither has disclosed casualty numbers.
Zelenskyy underlined the significance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall might enable Russia to rally worldwide assist for a deal that may require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.
Analysts have mentioned Bakhmut’s fall can be a blow to Ukraine and provides some tactical benefits to Russia however wouldn’t show decisive to the result of the warfare.
Bakhmut, situated about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar inhabitants of 80,000 and was an essential industrial heart, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.
The metropolis, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, additionally was identified for its glowing wine manufacturing in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late Nineteenth-century mansions — all now diminished to a smoldering wasteland — made it a preferred vacationer vacation spot.
When a separatist rebel engulfed japanese Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s unlawful annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels shortly received management of town, solely to lose it just a few months later.
After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched try to seize Kyiv early within the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August however have been pushed again.
The preventing there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives within the east and the south, but it surely resumed at full tempo late final yr. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining city of Soledar, simply north of Bakhmut, and closed in on town’s suburbs.
Intense Russian shelling focused town and close by villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to attempt to end off the resistance in what Ukrainians known as “fortress Bakhmut.”
Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to make use of the battle for town to develop his clout amid the tensions with the highest Russian army leaders whom he harshly criticized.
“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin mentioned within the video on Saturday.
The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” in accordance with Ukrainian officers. Both sides have spent ammunition at a charge unseen in any armed battle for many years, firing hundreds of rounds a day.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has mentioned that seizing town would enable Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk area, one of many 4 Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
