(Kyiv) Ukraine now controls only a third of the city of Bakhmout, the scene of violent and particularly deadly fighting for months in the East, said Thursday an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Serguiy Lechchenko.
“Bakhmut is one-third controlled by Ukraine, as established by international observers,” Leshchenko said in a press briefing broadcast on the presidency’s Telegram account.
However, he denied that the city is surrounded by Russian forces, as a pro-Russian official in the East recently claimed.
The boss of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojine, said on March 20 that his men, on the front line in this battle, controlled “about 70%” of Bakhmout. This information had not previously been confirmed by the Ukrainian authorities.
City of some 70,000 inhabitants before the war, Bakhmout has become, because of the length of the battle and the heavy losses suffered by both sides, the symbol of the struggle between Russians and Ukrainians for control of the industrial region of Donbass .
Russian troops have advanced in recent months north and south of the city, cutting several Ukrainian supply routes and seizing its eastern part.
The American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Wednesday that Russian forces control “about 65%” of Bakhmout after having advanced in the past five days, particularly in the north.
The Ukrainian army said for its part that it had “stabilized” the situation on the spot and intended to “very soon take advantage” of Russian exhaustion to launch a counter-offensive.
