Bakhmut battle pinning down Russia’s best units, Ukraine says

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday seizing the city would punch a hole in Ukrainian defences and let Moscow advance deeper.

Ukraine has decided to fight on in the ruined city of Bakhmut because the battle there is pinning down Russia’s best units and degrading them ahead of a planned Ukrainian spring counter-offensive, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

The comments, by Mykhailo Podolyak, were the latest signal of a shift by Kyiv this week to continue the defence of the small eastern city, site of the war’s bloodiest battle as Moscow tries to secure its first victory in more than half a year.

“Russia has changed tactics,” Podolyak said in an interview published by Italy’s La Stampa newspaper. “It has converged on Bakhmut with a large part of its trained military personnel, the remnants of its professional army, as well as the private companies.”

“We, therefore, have two objectives: to reduce their capable personnel as much as possible, and to fix them in a few key wearisome battles, to disrupt their offensive and concentrate our resources elsewhere, for the spring counter-offensive. So, today Bakhmut is completely effective, even exceeding its key tasks.”

Russia has made Bakhmut the main target of a winter offensive involving hundreds of thousands of reservists and mercenaries. It has succeeded in capturing the eastern part of the city and the outskirts to the north and south, but has so far failed to close a ring around Ukrainian defenders there.

Kyiv, which had seemed at the start of March to be planning to withdraw to positions west of the city, announced at the start of this week that its generals had decided to reinforce its troops in Bakhmut and fight on.

In a morning update, the Ukrainian general staff reported a large number of attacks along the front and said “the enemy is not halting its attacks on Bakhmut.”

Moscow says capturing Bakhmut would be a step towards capturing all of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial region, a major objective. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday seizing the city would punch a hole in Ukrainian defences and let Moscow advance deeper.