KYIV, Ukraine – In an assessment of the war’s longest ground battle, a leading think tank said Russia’s advance appeared to have stalled in Moscow’s campaign to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said there had been no confirmed advances by Russian forces in Bakhmut. ISW said Russian forces and units of the Kremlin-controlled Wagner paramilitary group continued to launch ground attacks in the city, but there was no evidence that they had managed to make any progress.
The situation in Bakhmut is “difficult, very difficult, with the enemy fighting for every meter,” said the founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, on Sunday on the Telegram messaging app.
The ISW report released on Saturday quoted the spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Sherevaty, who said the fighting in the Bakhmut region was more intense this week than before. According to Sherivati, 23 clashes took place in the city in the last 24 hours.
The ISW report follows allegations of Russian advances earlier this week. LONDON (Reuters) – Paramilitary units from the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group have captured most of eastern Bakhmut, the British Ministry of Defense said on Saturday, with the river that runs through the city now the front line of the fighting. The assessment highlighted that the Russian offensive would be difficult to sustain without more significant casualties.
Located in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, the mining town of Bakhmut is one of four regions in Ukraine illegally annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year. The Russian army began its campaign to take Bakhmut in August, with both sides seeing heavy losses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed not to back down.
On Sunday, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said, in its latest report, that the impact of large Russian military losses in Ukraine varies widely across Russia. The British Army Intelligence Update said that Moscow and St Petersburg remained “relatively unscathed”, particularly among members of the Russian elite.
The UK ministry said the death rate in many of Russia’s eastern regions as a percentage of the population was “30-40 times higher than in Moscow”. She added that ethnic minorities are often affected the most. In the southern Astrakhan region, for example, about 75% of the victims come from the Kazakh-Tatar minority.
The Institute for the Study of War said that Russia’s increasing casualties are reflected in the government’s loss of control over the country’s information sphere. The think tank said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed “infighting in the Kremlin’s inner circle” and that the Kremlin had effectively relinquished control of the country’s information space, with Putin unable to easily regain control.
The ISW considered Zakharova’s comments, made at a forum on “Practical and Technological Aspects of Information and Knowledge Warfare in Modern Realities” in Moscow, to be “noteworthy” and in line with the think tank’s longstanding assessments of the “declining Kremlin system and the dynamics of control over information space” .
Zakharova said in a separate statement Sunday that the next round of talks on extending the grain deal in the Black Sea will be held on Monday in Geneva. A Russian delegation is expected to meet with senior UN officials. The deal is currently set to expire on March 18.
A wartime agreement that halted grain shipments from Ukraine and helped ease soaring global food prices was extended by four months in November.
The agreement, which Ukraine and Russia signed in separate agreements with the United Nations and Turkey on July 22, established safe passage for shipping in the Black Sea and inspection procedures to address concerns that cargo ships could carry weapons or launch attacks.
Ukraine and Russia are major global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other foodstuffs to countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia where millions of poor people lack enough to eat. Russia was also the world’s largest exporter of fertilizer before the war.
The loss of these supplies in the aftermath of Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has sent global food prices soaring, and raised fears of a hunger crisis in poor countries.
Zelensky said on Sunday that he had posthumously awarded the highest national title, Hero of Ukraine, to a soldier who was believed to have been killed by Russian speakers. Zelensky identified him as Oleksandr Matsievsky, although the Ukrainian military gave a different name to the soldier pending final confirmation.
A short video clip that emerged this month and caused national outrage in Ukraine showed a man standing and smoking a cigarette in a wooded area and chanting “Glory to Ukraine” before he was cut down by gunfire. Senior Ukrainian officials claimed, without providing further evidence, that the man was an unarmed prisoner of war killed by Russian soldiers.
Matsievsky was “a Ukrainian warrior. A man who will be known and remembered forever.” Ukraine’s national security service, the State Security Department, said Matsievsky served as a sniper and was shot on December 30.
Ukrainian authorities reported Sunday morning that Russian attacks over the past day have killed at least five people and injured seven others in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Kherson regions, local Ukrainian authorities reported Sunday morning.
Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said two people were killed in the region, one in the city of Kostyantinivka and the other in the village of Tuninki. Four civilians were wounded.
Also in Donetsk province, Sloviansk Mayor Vadym Lyakh said the power grid and railway lines were damaged by Russian bombing on Sunday, but he did not report any casualties.
Local officials in the southern Kherson region confirmed that Russian forces fired 29 times at Ukrainian-controlled territory in the region on Saturday, while residential areas in the regional capital, Kherson, were hit three times. Three people were killed in the province and three others were wounded.
On Sunday, a woman was wounded in Russian shelling of the village of Belozerka, on the outskirts of Kherson.
In Kharkiv Province, three districts came under fire, but no civilian casualties were reported.
The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitaly Kim, said that the town of Ochakiv, located at the mouth of the Dnieper River, came under artillery fire in the early hours of Sunday morning. Cars were set on fire and private homes and high-rise buildings were damaged. There were no reports of injuries.
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