Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/BAKHMUT: Russians have been slowly taking ground around Bakhmut, as paramilitary group Wagner claimed to capture a settlement on the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian city that Moscow has been pushing to encircle in some of the most intense fighting seen since the beginning of the war nearly a year ago.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, said on Sunday that his forces had taken Krasna Hora, a settlement of about 600 people located on the northern edge of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
The claim came as the UK said regular Russian troops had suffered some of their highest casualties of the war in recent weeks. The UK’s Ministry of Defence said in a tweet that the uptick in Russian casualties was likely due to a range of factors, including a lack of trained troops, coordination and resources across the front.
Capturing Bakhmut to be merely symbolic: experts
The battle for Bakhmut, now in its seventh month, has been extended, bloody and futile. According to experts, victory over the city pounded to ruin would be symbolic.
However, both sides are digging in and flinging more troops at the city to break the deadlock as the invasion’s anniversary nears on February 24.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been calling for more weapons from Western allies.
“If weapon (deliveries) are accelerated — namely long-range weapons — we will not only not withdraw from Bakhmut, we will begin to de-occupy Donbas,” Zelensky told senior EU leaders in Kyiv earlier this month.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, told AFP that Ukraine’s forces required more standard artillery and ammunition to keep Russia at bay, adding, “we will have serious problems in Bakhmut if this does not happen.”
