KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Sunday that Bakhmut used to be “only in our hearts,” hours after Russia’s defense ministry reported that forces of the Wagner private army, with the support of Russian troops, had seized the city in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden at the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelenskyy said he believed the city had fallen, but added: “You have to understand that there is nothing,” announcing of the Russians, “They destroyed everything.”
“For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts,” he said. “There is nothing in this place.”
The Russian ministry statement on the Telegram channel came about eight hours after a similar claim by Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin. Ukrainian authorities at that time said that fighting for Bakhmut was continuing.
Zelenskyy’s comments came as Biden announced $375 million more in aid for Ukraine, which included more ammunition, artillery, and vehicles.
The eight-month battle for Bakhmut is the longest and probably most bloody of the conflict in Ukraine.
Analysts said that Russia’s victory in Bakhmut was unlikely to turn the tide in the war.
The Russian capture of the last remaining ground in Bakhmut is “not tactically or operationally significant,” a Washington-based think tank said late Saturday evening. The Institute for the Study of War said that taking control of these areas “does not grant Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations,” nor to “to defend against possible Ukrainian counterattacks.”
Using the city’s Soviet-era title, the Russian ministry stated, “In the Artyomovsk tactical direction, the assault teams of the Wagner private military company with the support of artillery and aviation of the southern battlegroup has completed the liberation of the city of Artyomovsk.”
Russian state news agencies cited the Kremlin’s press service as saying President Vladimir Putin “congratulates the Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk.”
In a video posted previous on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin stated the city got here below whole Russian control at about noon Saturday. He spoke flanked by means of a few part dozen warring parties, with ruined structures in the background and explosions heard in the gap.
Fighting has raged in and round Bakhmut for greater than 8 months.
Russian forces will nonetheless face the huge process of seizing the remainder section of the Donetsk area nonetheless below Ukrainian control, together with a number of closely fortified spaces.
It is not transparent which facet has paid the next value in the fight for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have continued losses believed to be in the hundreds, regardless that neither has disclosed casualty numbers.
Zelenskyy underlined the significance of protecting Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, announcing its fall may permit Russia to rally world beef up for a deal that may require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.
Analysts have stated Bakhmut’s fall can be a blow to Ukraine and provides some tactical benefits to Russia however wouldn’t end up decisive to the end result of the conflict.
Russian forces nonetheless face the giant process of seizing the remainder of the Donetsk area below Ukrainian control, together with a number of closely fortified spaces. The provinces of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk make up the Donbas, Ukraine’s commercial heartland the place a separatist rebellion started in 2014 and which Moscow illegally annexed in September.
Bakhmut, positioned about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar inhabitants of 80,000 and used to be the most important commercial middle, surrounded by means of salt and gypsum mines.
The city, which used to be named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik progressive when Ukraine used to be section of the Soviet Union, additionally used to be recognized for its glowing wine manufacturing in underground caves. Its wide tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with enforcing overdue Nineteenth-century mansions — all now lowered to a smoldering desert — made it a well-liked vacationer vacation spot.
When a separatist riot engulfed japanese Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s unlawful annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels temporarily received control of the city, only to lose it a couple of months later.
After Russia switched its center of attention to the Donbas following a botched strive to grasp Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops attempted to take Bakhmut in August however had been driven again.
The combating there abated in autumn as Russia used to be faced with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, nevertheless it resumed at complete tempo overdue remaining 12 months. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining the town of Soledar, simply north of Bakhmut, and closed in at the city’s suburbs.
Intense Russian shelling centered the city and close by villages as Moscow waged a three-sided attack to check out to end off the resistance in what Ukrainians known as “fortress Bakhmut.”
Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin attempted to use the fight for the city to make bigger his clout amid the tensions with the highest Russian army leaders whom he harshly criticized.
“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin stated in the video on Saturday.
The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few structures intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner warring parties “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” in accordance to Ukrainian officers. Both facets have spent ammunition at a fee unseen in any armed warfare for many years, firing hundreds of rounds an afternoon.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has stated that seizing the city would permit Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk area, one of the 4 Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
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Zeke Miller reported from Hiroshima, Japan.
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Follow the AP’s protection of the conflict at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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