Moscow's troops have been attacking the city of Bakhmut for months. Now the end of the fighting seems to be near. The first Ukrainian units are already said to be leaving the city.
The battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut appears to be drawing to a close. Russian artillery shelled the last roads leading out of the heavily contested city on Friday. At the same time, the head of the Russian Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, declared that Bakhmut was almost completely surrounded and that only one road was open to the Ukrainian troops. "The pincers are closing," he said in a video published online. The information could not be independently verified.
According to information from the Reuters news agency, the Ukrainians have already dug new trenches for defensive positions west of the city. According to reports, Kiev's troops have already destroyed bridges in the city. Denys Yaroslavskyi, commander of a Ukrainian army unit in Bakhmut, told Espreso TV that parts of some units had been ordered to move to safer positions and described the situation in the city as "a slaughterhouse on both sides".
Robert Brovdi, commander of a Ukrainian drone unit called "Madyar" operating in Bakhmut, said in a video published online that his unit had received the order to withdraw immediately. He said he fought in the city for 110 days. A deputy commander of Ukraine's National Guard told NV Radio that the situation was "critical" and fighting was going on "around the clock". "Every meter of Ukrainian soil costs the enemy hundreds of lives. There are far more Russians here than we have ammunition to destroy them."
Moscow's associations have been trying to conquer Bakhmut for months. Taking the city in the Donetsk region would be the first major success of Russia's winter offensive, after the Kremlin called up hundreds of thousands of reservists last fall. Russia hopes that capturing Bakhmut will be an important step towards capturing the rest of the surrounding Donbass industrial area.
