As intense fighting rages in and around Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military spokesperson has said that the eastern city is still controlled by Ukraine and there has been no mass withdrawals.
According to Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Ukrainian troops are rotating positions in Bakhmut. "The fighting in Bakhmut is more on the outskirts, with the city controlled by Ukrainian defense forces: the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Border Guard and the National Guard," Cherevatyi told the CNN.
He added that the Ukrainian troops are rotating positions in Bakhmut in controlled, planned rotations while snubbing reports about Kyiv's men retreating from the battered city. "There is also no mass withdrawal of Ukrainian troops," he said.
As of Saturday, fighting is on in the villages of Vasiukivka and Dubovo-Vasylivka to the north of Bakhmut and in the villages of Ivanivske and Bohdanivka to the west. "There were 21 enemy attacks with the use of various artillery systems and MLRS near Bakhmut alone, and 9 combat engagements. 131 attacks and 38 combat engagements took place on this front in total," he added.
Oleh Zhdanov, a prominent Ukrainian analyst of military affairs, too said that he could not detect any immediate signs Kyiv was going to order a retreat from the city. "At the moment the situation is more or less stabilized. In terms of the advancement of Russian troops, we practically stopped (it)," he said in a YouTube interview.
Meanwhile, British military intelligence said on Saturday that the Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces. Besides rivate military Wagner group, the regular Russian army too have made further advances into Bakhmut's northern suburbs, the British Defence Ministry said in its daily intelligence bulletin.
The bulletin added that two key bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed within the last 36 hours, adding that Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the city are increasingly limited. "One of those bridges connected Bakhmut to the city's last main supply route from the Ukrainian-held town of Chasiv Yar, about 13 km (eight miles) to the west," it said.
Though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked defenders in the city in a video message on Saturday night, he gave no details of the fighting.
Russia considers Bakhmut a strategically significant zone as it would aid in completing the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of Moscow's most important objectives.
