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| Photograph by Joseph Sywenkyj for The WSJ |
Russian troops have tempered their assault on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian commanders say, as stiff resistance forces Russian units to shift some of their firepower to surrounding areas.
Some Ukrainian officers and British military intelligence say that Russia is no longer hitting Bakhmut—a city that has assumed outsize importance to both sides—with the same ferocity as it was last month. The Ukrainian commanders say Russia has instead repositioned armored vehicles and artillery fire toward the nearby town of Soledar.
Bakhmut and Soledar are part of the same front, and fighting has ebbed and flowed around both cities before. An easing in clashes in one area doesn’t suggest the Russians have given up on taking Bakhmut entirely, but rather indicates that Ukraine’s resistance has forced a rethink.
Several Ukrainian officers say they believe that Russia, at least for now, has redirected fire from Bakhmut after struggling for months to take the city. Instead, Russia might seek to test Ukrainian defenses around Soledar and claw out a victory there, they say.
Since the autumn, Bakhmut and its surrounding area has emerged as one of the most hotly contested front lines of the entire war, with both sides pouring enormous amounts of troops and hardware into the front.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Valeriy Zaluzhny, said late Tuesday that the fighting in the Bakhmut area was the most challenging situation faced by his forces.
While it has little strategic significance, Bakhmut has acquired great importance for Wagner, the Russian paramilitary force that has sought to storm the city, as well as for Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed Russia’s military commander in Ukraine in October. Russian and Ukrainian forces have been fighting for Bakhmut, a city of 70,000 people, for around six months. --->READ MORE HERE
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| AP Photo |
The Russian military’s top brass came under increasing scrutiny Wednesday as more details emerged of how at least 89 Russian soldiers, and possibly many more, were killed in a Ukrainian artillery attack on a single building.
The scene last weekend in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka, where the soldiers were temporarily stationed, appears to have been a recipe for disaster. Hundreds of Russian troops were reportedly clustered in a building close to the front line, well within range of Ukraine’s Western-supplied precision artillery, possibly sitting close to an ammunition store and perhaps unwittingly helping Kyiv’s forces to zero in on them.
It was one of the deadliest single attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and the highest death toll in a single incident acknowledged so far by either side in the conflict.
Ukraine’s armed forces claimed the Makiivka strike killed around 400 Russian soldiers housed in a vocational school building. About 300 more of them were wounded, officials alleged. It wasn’t possible to verify either side’s claims due to the fighting.
The Russian military sought to blame the soldiers for their own deaths. Gen. Lt. Sergei Sevryukov said in a statement late Tuesday that their phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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