She could be nicknamed Bakhmout the Bloody. For months, this city in eastern Ukraine has become the epicenter of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. The belligerents claim in turn to have advanced in this locality, without it being possible to verify with precision and independently their statements, in the fog of war. But who holds Bakhmout? Is a counter-offensive underway in the region? 20 minutes takes stock for you.
Who owns the city?
After months of shelling and then months of deadly battles, Bakhmout is approximately 80% controlled by Russian forces. The city, devastated, was emptied of its inhabitants – about 70,000 before the war. But if the Kremlin forces and their allies from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner control the majority of the locality, the battle is much harder than expected. Moscow hoped to make the capture of this city in the east of the country a symbol of its advance in Ukraine. However, the positions seem to be very stable despite regular declarations of victory from each side.
On Friday, the Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister announced that kyiv forces had advanced two kilometers around Bakhmout. “The enemy suffered significant human losses. […] We have not lost any positions in Bakhmout this week,” she added. The statements come after another senior Ukrainian military official said on Wednesday that Russian forces had retreated from some areas near Bakhmout following counterattacks by Kyiv forces.
But Russia on Thursday evening denied any breakthrough of its defenses by Ukrainian forces. “Statements broadcast by individual Telegram channels about ‘defence breakthroughs’ allegedly taking place in various parts of the line of contact do not correspond to reality,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Russian ministry, however, did not mention reports of a Russian retreat near Bakhmout, saying only that “assault detachments continue to liberate the western part” of the city where the last pockets are located. Ukrainians.
When could a Ukrainian counter-offensive occur?
For weeks, kyiv has been preparing a major attack to reconquer the territories occupied by Russia in the east and south of the country. This decisive assault is widely commented on and should take place in the spring, although a precise date has not been disclosed. After claiming in late April that preparations were coming to an end, kyiv backpedaled on Thursday. The Ukrainian president assured in an interview broadcast by the BBC that his army still needed time to prepare. ” With [ce que nous avons], we can move forward and be successful. But we would lose a lot of people. I think that is unacceptable. So we have to wait. We still need a little extra time,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
After this interview, the boss of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner accused the Ukrainian president of being “dishonest” in his remarks because the Ukrainian counter-offensive “is in full swing”, according to him. ” In the direction [de Bakhmout], units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces penetrate the flanks and, unfortunately, in some places, succeed,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose men are on the front line in this battle. “The plan of the Ukrainian army is in action […]all the units that have been trained and have received weapons, tanks and everything necessary are already fully engaged” in the fighting, he added.
Still, this Ukrainian operation has been in preparation for months, while the front has been largely frozen since last year, with most of the fighting taking place for control of Bakhmout. And for the Ukrainian authorities, its success is all the more important as it could determine future Western aid, when some are calling for peace talks with Russia.
What are the tensions on the Russian side in this region?
On the Russian coast, Wagner’s mercenaries are on the front line in Bakhmout. A situation which highlights the tensions that exist between the head of this paramilitary organization, described as terrorist by French deputies on Tuesday, and the Kremlin. On Tuesday, Wagner’s boss accused Russian regular army soldiers of fleeing their positions in Bakhmout. “Today one of the units of the Ministry of Defense fled from one of our flanks […] They left their positions, they all fled,” accused Yevgeny Prigojine, in a video posted on Telegram before adding: “The fish rots from the head. So if the missions are fixed by assholes, the soldier leaves the trench, because there is no point in dying unnecessarily. »
These vitriolic statements show the tensions that exist between this nebula which fights for the interests of Moscow in Ukraine and the regular army. Last week, Wagner’s boss announced that he would withdraw his men from Bakhmout on May 10 if the general staff did not provide him with the ammunition he was asking for. On Sunday, he claimed to have received “the promise” of sufficient deliveries, seeming to rule out any retreat from Bakhmout in the immediate future. Tuesday, however, he reiterated that he would begin the withdrawal in the absence of sufficient deliveries: he said that Wagner had received Tuesday “only 10%” of the ammunition he had requested. This public display of accusations underlines in any case the deep divisions within the Russian forces, at the very moment when those in kyiv say they are preparing to launch their great offensive.