Ukraine Wednesday admitted it may have to withdraw its troops from Bakhmut as Russia pursued a bloody, months-long offensive to capture the besieged Ukrainian city.
Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Ukrainian troops might pull back from the city.
‘Our military is obviously going to weigh all of the options,’ Rodnyansky told CNN. ‘So far, they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back. We’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing.’
The battle for Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance as defenders hold out against relentless shelling and waves of Russian troops taking heavy casualties in a months-long campaign to capture it.
Rodnyansky noted that Russia was using the best troops of the Wagner Group to try to encircle the city, while Zelensky accused Moscow of throwing waves of men into Bakhmut with no regard to their lives.
However, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, a rogue millionaire with longtime links to Putin, said on Wednesday that he so far had seen no signs of a Ukrainian withdrawal from the city. He claimed that Kyiv has in fact been reinforcing its positions there.
‘The Ukrainian army is deploying additional troops and is doing what it can to retain control of the city,’ Prigozhin said.
‘Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are offering fierce resistance, and the fighting is getting increasingly bloody by day.’
Vladimir Putin’s forces are continuing their relentless attacks on the small mining city in eastern Ukraine in their bid to encircle the defending forces and force them to surrender or withdraw.
If successful, this would give Putin his first major victory in more than half a year and open the way to the capture of the last remaining urban centres in the Donetsk region.
