Ukraine keeps up pressure after Russia declares victory

Associated Press

Outside Bakhmut, (Ukraine): Watching imagery from a drone camera overhead, Ukrainian battalion commander Oleg Shiryaev warned his men in nearby trenches that Russian forces were advancing across a field toward a patch of trees outside the city of Bakhmut.

The leader of the 228th Battalion of the 127th Kharkiv Territorial Defence Brigade then ordered a mortar team to get ready. A target was locked. A mortar tube popped out a loud orange blast, and an explosion cut a new crater in an already pockmarked hillside. “We are moving forward,” Shiryaev said after at least one drone image showed a Russian fighter struck down. “We fight for every tree, every trench, every dugout."

Russian forces declared victory in the eastern city last month after the longest, deadliest battle since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 15 months ago. But Ukrainian defenders like Shiryaev aren't retreating. Instead, they are keeping up the pressure and continuing the fight from positions on the western fringes of Bakhmut.

The pushback gives commanders in Moscow another thing to think about ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that appears to be taking shape. Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Russia sought to create the impression of calm around Bakhmut, but in fact, artillery shelling still goes on at levels similar to those at the height of the battle to take the city. The fight, she said, is evolving into a new phase.

“The battle for the Bakhmut area hasn't stopped; it is ongoing, just taking different forms,” said Maliar, dressed in her characteristic fatigues in an interview from a military media centre in Kyiv. Russian forces are now trying but failing to oust Ukrainian fighters from the “dominant heights” overlooking Bakhmut.

“We are holding them very firmly,” she said. From the Kremlin's perspective, the area around Bakhmut is just part of the more than 1,000-kilometre (621-mile) front line that the Russian military must hold. That task could be made more difficult by the withdrawal of the mercenaries from private military contractor Wagner Group who helped take control of the city. They will be replaced with Russian soldiers.

For Ukrainian forces, recent work has been opportunistic — trying to wrest small gains from the enemy and taking strategic positions, notably from two flanks on the northwest and southwest, where the Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade has been active, officials said.