Bakhmut remains the last red dot of the war in Ukraine. The eastern region of the country has been the fiercest battle for weeks and the eyes of both NATO and Russia are focused. Both blocks calculate the next moves, which depend on the weapons sent or the progress of each army.
Ukraine, for example, is holding out in anticipation of a counter-attack. Despite the latest defeats, with the loss of cities such as Volehdar and an intensification of Russian attacks on several cities in the region, some Russian attempts to gain positions have been halted.
Denis Pushilin, Russia’s mandated interim leader in the Donetsk region, stated on Sunday. Moreover, in an interview with the official Russian agency TASS, he has stated that “for now” there are no signs that the regime in Kiev is starting to withdraw their fighters and “rescue their depleted units” at this crossroads.
Pushilin recalled that Ukraine’s president, VolodÃmir Zelensky, had already warned that his army has no intention of defending Bakhmut at “any cost” and that it will do so “as long as it is reasonable”. “The word ‘reasonable’ to the enemy can mean anything, including fighting ‘every last Ukrainian’,” the interim leader said.
Just as the situation on this front was being evaluated, Wagner’s group of mercenaries claimed this Sunday that they had taken the city of Yahidne. The Ukrainian military denied this within hours, pointing out that they were “failed offensives”. Offensive efforts continued, but without success, as the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine added on its Facebook page.
[Un año del inicio de la guerra en Ucrania: las imágenes del conflicto que han dado la vuelta al mundo]
Still, the city of Bakhmut is going through hard times for the Ukrainian armed forces. According to Denis Pushilin, the contingent of this country defending it is surrounded practically on all sides. Before the outbreak of military action, it had a population of about 70,000. Now there are an estimated 5,000 left. It is located 55 kilometers northeast of the city of Donetsk and is connected by road to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the largest centers in the region and under Ukrainian control.
However, according to the government in Kiev, the resistance of the Ukrainian troops in that sector of the front makes it possible not only to exhaust the Russian troops, but also to prepare a counter-offensive. The deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Vadim Skibitskiy, predicted such a move for “European Spring”. Although he qualified that it depends on many factors, including Western arms supplies.
One of the objectives of the counter-offensive, according to Skibitskiy in statements collected this Sunday by the digital media Ukrainska Pravda, is to “pull a hole in Russia’s southern front, between Crimea and mainland Russia”. Ukraine will not rest, he insisted, until it liberates all occupied territories, including the Crimea peninsula. “We will not stop until we have the country back on the borders it had in 1991,” the senior Ukrainian official said.
It was precisely this idea that Volodimir Zelensky repeated this Sunday. The President of Ukraine recalled on the Day of Resistance to the Russian occupation of Crimea that peace could be restored with the return to the Ukrainians of this peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
[Zelenski en el aniversario de la guerra: “Si nuestros socios hacen sus deberes, la victoria es inevitable”]
“Nine years ago, Russian aggression began in Crimea. If we take back Crimea, we will restore peace. It is our land. Our people. Our history. We will bring the Ukrainian flag back to every corner of Ukraine,” Zelensky wrote. in a Telegram message.
On February 26, 2014, next to the headquarters of the parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, in Simferopol, pro-Russians and pro-Ukrainians gathered in a rally that ended in clashes that left two people dead and about thirty injured . Twenty days later, on March 18, Russia annexed the peninsula.
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