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Top Zelensky officials are considering a potential ‘strategic pullback’ from the beleaguered eastern city of Bakhmut. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted that he is not prepared to order the continued defense of the city at all costs. Both Ukraine and Russia are suffering tremendous casualties in the fight for the city, but Russia has superior artillery fire, which it has been using nonstop around the clock. The city is almost completely surrounded by Russian troops.
According to Zelensky aide Alexander Rodnyansky, Kyiv has not yet pulled Ukrainian forces out of Bakhmut, but Zelensky may soon decide that the cost of defending the city “outweighs the benefits.”
“Our military is obviously going to weigh all of the options,” he said. “So far, they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back because we’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing,” Rodnyansky added.
Zelensky has also said that defending Bakhmut has been “most difficult” for Ukrainian troops. However, on Wednesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner Grop, said that Ukrainian forces have continued to put up fierce resistance to Russia’s continuous attacks on the city.
“The Ukrainian army is throwing extra reserves into Artyomovsk and trying to hold the town with all their strength,” Prigozhin said. Artyomovsk is the Russian name for Bakhmut.
“Tens of thousands of Ukrainian army fighters are putting up furious resistance. The bloodiness of the battles is growing by the day,” Prigozhin added.
Videos appearing on social media show the devastation. A barren battlefield has replaced a once peaceful, bustling city.
City streets and neighborhoods have been abandoned, bombed, and turned into a war zone.
With Russian forces pounding Bakhmut with nonstop artillery fire, there are no signs that things will improve for Ukrainian troops in the region. According to a retired U.S. Marine fighting in Ukraine, the frontlines in Bakhmut are a “meat grinder” where soldiers only survive an average of “four hours.”
On Tuesday, Zelensky said, “Russia does not count people at all, sending them to constantly storm our positions.”
“The intensity of fighting is only increasing,” Zelensky concluded.
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According to Ukrainian officials, Friday saw more of the eerily consistent nationwide missile strikes that Russia has been conducting across the country for months. However, there was a noticeable uptick in the number of strikes Russia conducted on Friday with Moscow firing up to 35 S-300 missiles at Zaporizhzhia and the Kharkiv region. The escalated strikes caused additional power outages overnight across the country.
Kyiv has been warning of a new Russian offensive since the end of 2022 and has claimed that hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been amassing on its border. Friday's increased missile attacks came a day after Serhiy Hayday, the leader of the Luhasnk region in Ukraine said that Moscow was increasing its attacks on that part of the country. Hayday commented that the increased missile strikes were "part of the full-scale offensive that Russia has been planning."
While it has been difficult to assess with accuracy, there have been indications from both sides that Russia has been building up its mobilized reserve forces on Ukraine's eastern border and inside Ukraine itself. A pro-Kremlin, Russian military blogger, Evgeny Poddubny, wrote on his Telegram channel Thursday, "Our units, which were mostly formed from mobilized men, gained experience, which made it possible to increase the stability of the units on the front line." Poddubny went on to eventually admit that Ukrainian forces had also been able to replenish its "depleted units."
At the end of January, Hayday noted that there was an "incredible number" of Russian forces inside eastern Ukraine. Hayday said, "There are huge numbers of them [Russian troops in the Svatove-Kreminna area]. And a very large number of mobilized. And they are constantly being thrown into the offensive - almost all the time."
While the growing number of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine has not yet amounted to much on the battlefield, Hayday noted that Russian troops in the area are on the offensive. He then went on to say of the escalation in his region, "We can conclude that a certain escalation has already begun. And we can say de facto that this is part of the full-scale offensive that Russia has been planning."
While Russia begins to gear up for its much-anticipated winter offensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been on a whirlwind diplomatic tour of Europe in an effort to drum up fighter jets and other military support for war-battered Ukraine. His tour has included England, France, and Poland, thus far among other nations. Zelensky has had some success with getting larger-scale weapons and equipment from Ukraine's Western allies, with both Berlin and Washington agreeing to send Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams tanks to Kyiv at the end of January.
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