With Bakhmut in Ruins, Ukraine Shifts Focus to City’s Outskirts (Published 2023) (2024)

Russia is ‘mopping up’ inside Bakhmut as Ukraine seeks to advance outside the city.

While many of Kyiv’s battlefield claims could not be verified, it is clear that Ukrainian forces have made minor gains in recent weeks to the north and south of Bakhmut, breaking through a Russian defensive position in a key battle that started on May 6.

Speaking during a visit to Ukrainian soldiers on the eastern front on Sunday, General Syrsky claimed on Sunday that Ukrainian forces were continuing to make advances in the suburbs of Bakhmut and were “close to tactically encircling the city.” But the Ukrainian military did not provide details about where it was advancing.

On Monday, Maj. Rodion Kudriashov, a commander in the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade, said the Ukrainians continued to make small but important gains around the city.

“We are trying to feel the enemy’s weak spots and gradually, step by step, we are trying to squeeze him out, occupying advantageous positions for us, taking the initiative,” he said in an interview with the Ukrainian broadcaster RBC-Ukraine.

Some analysts said the Ukrainian claims appeared to be an effort to put a gloss on the setback in Bakhmut.

“Talks about tactical encirclement are premature and probably reflect a hasty response to the city’s fall,” Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst for Rochan Consulting, wrote on Monday.

That does not mean, however, that Russia’s grip on the city is assured. A great deal could depend on the plans of the mercurial and bombastic head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose fighters spearheaded the Russian assault on Bakhmut. Hours after declaring “victory” over the weekend, Mr. Prigozhin said he would withdraw his fighters beginning on Thursday.

“From June 1, not a single Wagner PMC fighter will be at the forefront until we undergo re-formation, re-equipment and additional training,” he said.

Withdrawing forces from an active front is no simple task, and could leave Russia vulnerable to attacks from Ukrainian troops on high ground on the city’s outskirts. Given the widely reported tensions between Wagner and Russia’s military leadership, and communication problems within the Russian ranks, analysts say Ukraine will be watching for fissures to exploit.

Even if Mr. Prigozhin does not pull his fighters out now, military analysts noted that Russia will face challenges controlling Bakhmut, especially with Ukrainian forces preparing a counteroffensive that could escalate fighting along other parts of the 600-mile-long front line.

“Russian forces will likely need additional reinforcements to hold Bakhmut city and its flanks at the expense of operations in other directions,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest analysis on Sunday.

The Ukrainians and British military intelligence have both reported that there is evidence the Russian military is sending thousands of soldiers to the area.

Hanna Maliar, a deputy Ukrainian minister of defense, said on Monday that while “the enemy is mopping up the areas of the city under his control,” Ukraine is continuing “the struggle for dominant heights” around the city.

For now, she said, Ukrainian soldiers had fulfilled their primary objective in the battle for Bakhmut.

“The offensive potential of the enemy is significantly reduced,” she said. “The enemy has suffered huge losses, and we have gained time for certain actions that can be described later.”

Why does Bakhmut matter? A mix of strategy and symbolism.

After the Kremlin claimed on Sunday to have seized Bakhmut, Russian state media celebrated — one newscast compared the battle there to major victories of the Soviet Union in World War II.

Bakhmut has been symbolically important to Ukraine as well. “Hold Bakhmut” became a rallying cry for Ukrainians, even as bombings reduced most of the city to rubble and nearly all of its 70,000 prewar residents fled.

President Volodymyr Zelensky — who once vowed that the city he called a “fortress” would not fall — cited Bakhmut in a high-profile appearance before the U.S. Congress in December, when he presented the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, with a Ukrainian flag signed by soldiers fighting there.

Even if Russia does have full control of Bakhmut, military analysts say the Ukrainian resistance tied up Moscow’s forces for months, killing or wounding thousands, and posing a significant obstacle to President Vladimir V. Putin’s goal of conquering all of the eastern Donbas region.

But the operation also came at significant cost to Ukraine’s forces, which expended huge amounts of precious ammunition and deployed some of their most capable units to reinforce faltering defenses as the Russians pushed forward. At one point, U.S. officials warned Ukraine that it was using resources in Bakhmut that would be better saved for a broader counteroffensive that Western allies see as Kyiv’s best chance to retake ground lost to Russia.

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Security operations continue in Russia’s border region, an official says.

One video showed several soldiers and three armored vehicles, including one bearing an insignia previously seen on Ukrainian equipment, around a damaged building. Another showed a soldier and an armored vehicle bearing Ukrainian markings at an intersection about three miles into Russian territory. A third video appears to show pro-Ukrainian fighters capturing a Russian armored vehicle.

A group called the Free Russia Legion, which says its ranks are made up of Russians, claimed to be behind the attacks. The group operates under the umbrella of Ukraine’s International Legion, a fighting force overseen by Ukrainian officers. Ukrainian officials sought to cast the unit’s action on Monday as proof of division among Russians, but it was not clear whether the group had acted on its own initiative or under the direction of Ukrainian officers.

The Ukrainian government, which typically follows a policy of deliberate ambiguity about strikes inside Russian territory, said that it had not been behind the attack. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said that Kyiv was watching the events in Belgorod “with interest and studying the situation, but it has nothing to do with it.”

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency identified the attackers as “opposition-minded citizens of Russia.” Andrii Yusov, a spokesman for the agency, told Ukrainian news outlets that Russian partisans were working to create a security zone intended to protect Ukrainian civilians near the border.

Mr. Gladkov, the regional governor, said that a Ukrainian sabotage group had crossed the border near the city of Belgorod on Monday morning and that the Russian military, border service and intelligence agency were “taking the necessary measures to eliminate the enemy.” By Monday evening, he reported that eight residents had been injured.

The Free Russia Legion said it had “liberated” the border village of Kozinka — the location of the border crossing in the verified videos — along with another pro-Ukraine group known as the Russian Volunteer Corps. Those claims could not be independently confirmed, and it was unclear late Monday whether the groups’ fighters remained in Russian territory.

Reports of cross-border shelling from Ukraine on Monday morning gave way to fighting in the afternoon in several locations between the border and Grayvoron, a local administrative center about six miles from Kozinka, according to accounts published on Telegram.

Russia’s border in the area is well fortified with mines, trenches and barriers. Since the war began, the authorities have spent about 10 billion rubles — about $125 million — to strengthen the defenses of the Belgorod region, according to a statement by the regional construction minister to the news agency Interfax in February. The local government also established a territorial defense unit to train citizens in military tactics.

Mr. Gladkov initially played down reports of violence, saying that there was a “massive informational attack” underway, and sought to calm residents’ nerves in a video posted Monday morning. But by the evening, he said that he was putting the region on a counterterrorism footing, which gives the authorities wide power to establish temporary restrictions on movement, step up identity verifications and control telephone communications.

The Kremlin sought to play down the incident, with its spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov telling the Russian news agency Tass that it was a Ukrainian attempt to “divert attention from the situation” in Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces claimed over the weekend to have captured after a nearly yearlong battle.

While there have been numerous reports of Ukrainians shelling targets across the border over the course of the 15-month conflict, ground assaults are rare. In early March, the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed that it had staged a brief incursion into villages in Bryansk, another Russian region on Ukraine’s border.

The Russian Volunteer Corps is led by a Russian nationalist in exile, and is part of a miscellaneous collection of groups of Russian citizens who oppose President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule and have taken up arms for the Ukrainian cause.

Russia has suffered several significant psychological blows during the war, including the explosion that damaged the bridge linking occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea fleet. But Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who now advises the Kyiv government, said that this border incursion was a milestone because it involved armed troops, which could force Russia to deploy more of its forces along the border instead of at the front lines.

It could also erode Russian unity, he said.

“Russians will see they have problems between their own citizens, so the idea of unified Russia is seriously damaged,” Mr. Zagorodnyuk said.

Oleksandr Chubko, Oleg Matsnev and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.

Bakhmut is gone. Here is an aerial look at the war’s destruction.

The notion of a “winner,” however, defies what is so clearly lost — the many lives and homes in the once peaceful city, known for its salt-mines and sparkling wine, largely reduced to ashes. A few remaining civilians moved anxiously trying to find a safe path as the Russians fought in the neighborhood where the people were taking shelter. It was not immediately possible to know who the people are, where they are going and how they survived.

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Before the war, Bakhmut was known for sparkling wine. Today, it’s a ruin.

Today, Bakhmut is all but destroyed, with a deputy defense minister comparing it in April to the war-ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo.

The city of Bakhmut was renamed Artemivsk in 1924 by the Soviet leadership in honor of the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor “Artem” Sergeyev, a friend of Stalin’s.

Bakhmut is one of a string of industrial cities in the Donbas region, which is a main source of Ukraine’s production of coal and other commodities.

A conflict erupted in Donbas starting in 2014, as separatists backed by Russian forces seized control of regional capitals and other towns, establishing breakaway republics.

Bakhmut itself saw weeks of fighting in 2014 when the separatists attempted to seize the city, but eventually Ukrainian forces re-established full control. Two years later, the governmentin Kyiv jettisoned the Soviet name in favor of Bakhmut.

Key events in the battle for Bakhmut, the war’s longest-running sustained fight.

When two Ukrainian cities in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine fell to Russian forces in quick succession last summer, Bakhmut, a city about 30 miles to the southwest, became the next target of Russia’s campaign to secure the whole of the Donbas.

Bakhmut had been a supply hub for Ukrainian fighters in the two Luhansk cities — Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk — and had been shelled repeatedly by Russian forces, prompting much of Bakhmut’s population of about 70,000 to flee. At that time, however, few expected the city, which was also the site of fierce fighting in 2014, to become the longest-running sustained battle of the war.

Fall 2022

Russia’s assault on Bakhmut relied on tactics employed in previous battles: deploying artillery firepower and trying to take neighboring towns and villages before moving into the city itself.

At the same time, Moscow, which broadly held territory east of the city, cut off supply routes into Bakhmut that Ukrainian forces were using. Severing that access would force the Ukrainian forces to retreat to avoid being surrounded.

In the fall, the two sides fought nearby, and the shelling of the city intensified.

December 2022

In a national address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused Russia of turning Bakhmut into “burned ruins.” Among Ukrainians, the phrase “hold Bakhmut” became a rallying cry, and the defense of the city increasingly became a national symbol of resistance.

January 2023

Russian forces captured the village of Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces had deemed it key to Bakhmut’s defense because the village lies on high ground east of roads into the city that were crucial for resupplying the forces defending the city.

Ukrainian forces retreated from the town of Soledar, northeast of Bakhmut, enabling Russian forces to tighten their grip near the city. Russia later claimed to have seized a handful of villages near Soledar, further imperiling resupply routes into Bakhmut.

February 2023

The situation grew dire for the Ukrainians, with their main remaining supply route — which one general called the “last breathing tube” — coming under increasing attack from Russian forces. A U.S. intelligence assessment from the time, leaked online in April, said that as of Feb. 25, Ukrainian forces in the city “were almost operationally encircled.”

Mr. Zelensky told Ukrainians that “the situation is getting more and more difficult,” and Ukraine’s military barred aid workers and other civilians from entering Bakhmut for safety reasons, a decision thatwas seen as a prelude to a possible withdrawal.

But Ukraine sent in reinforcements, including a variety of elite units, and managed to push Russian forces back far enough to allow resupply of soldiers in the city and evacuation of the wounded.

March 2023

The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, twice visited soldiers in Bakhmut and said that Russia was putting its “most prepared units” into the fight.

The Wagner mercenary force, which helped lead Russia’s assault on the city, took control of most of eastern Bakhmut, leaving the Bakhmutka River, which runs north to south through the city’s center, as the new front line. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Wagner group’s founder, said: “The pincers are closing.”

April 2023

In fierce urban combat,Ukrainian forces defended a western pocket of the city that was just 20 blocks wide, steadily shrinking and relentlessly pounded by artillery.

Russia stepped up its attacks on Bakhmut with artillery and airstrikes, Ukraine said, even as Kyiv’s forces fought to keep a grip on vital roads leading west out of the city, their last major resupply and evacuation route.

May 2023

Mr. Prigozhin threatened to withdraw his fighters from Bakhmut on May 10 due to a lack of support from Russia’s Ministry of Defense, but appeared to backtrack two days later in saying he had been promised as much ammunition and weaponry as needed to continue the fight.

In mid-May, Ukrainian forces managed to take back some territory to the north and south of Bakhmut even as Russian forces continued their assault within the city limits.

On May 20, Mr. Prigozhin claimed the city was fully under Wagner control, which Russia’s Defense Ministry later echoed. Ukraine’s top military commander then conceded that only a small contingent of troops was still defending Bakhmut.

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A Ukrainian sergeant who died outside Bakhmut is buried amid his daughter’s cries.

The men of Sergeant Shargorodskyi’s unit carried his portrait and the flags of the Azov Regiment, of which he was a commander of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.

Sergeant Shargorodskyi had fought in the Bakhmut area since late last year. He was part of the assault unit that recently retook an area outside Bakhmut from Russian forces. He and his men were working on their next operation when he stepped on one of the thousands of mines hidden in the earth of war-ravaged eastern Ukraine.

Members of his unit rushed to evacuate him from the battlefield, but his wounds were too severe.

At the cemetery, surrounded by soldiers, his family embraced his coffin as his two children looked on. Sonia wailed “Baba” — daddy — while clutching her grief-stricken mother.

Anna Barsalo contributed reporting.

— Nicole Tung

Belarus pardons an opposition activist who was hauled off a Ryanair flight, state media says.

Such leniency for someone who had been an active member of the opposition is unusual in Belarus, where, during nearly three decades in power, Mr. Lukashenko has a longstanding pattern of silencing dissent and violently suppressing opponents.

After the decision, Mr. Protasevich said that he was “insanely grateful to the country and personally to the president” for pardoning him, according to a video published by Belta.

Like many opposition activists, Mr. Protasevich had fled into exile. But in May 2021, he was on a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania when a Belarusian fighter jet forced the plane to land in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. Security officials arrested him on the tarmac along with his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.

After the arrest, Mr. Protasevich made a confession, aired on state television, that included an apology for his actions, which his family said had been forced. His statements included praise for Mr. Lukashenko and an admission about seeking to topple him.

In June 2021, Mr. Protasevich acknowledged that “many people consider me a traitor” for helping the Belarusian authorities after his arrest.

Some of Mr. Protasevich’s former allies in the opposition have suggested that he might have been shown leniency in return for his cooperation.

Sergei Bespalov, a Belarusian opposition activist and blogger, claimed that “tens of people have been jailed because of his actions.”

“He simply gave them up,” he said in a video following Mr. Protasevich’s sentencing in May.

But Franak Viacorka, another Belarusian opposition activist, said that the pardon had come at a cost.

Mr. Protasevich “was forced to collaborate,” Mr. Viacorka wrote in a Twitter post on Monday, adding, “Pardoning doesn’t mean freedom: he is under the hood.”

Ms. Sapega, who was arrested with Mr. Protasevich, has been sentenced to six years in prison in Belarus. Her plea for pardon was rejected.

More than 1,500 people in Belarus are considered to be political prisoners by rights groups and many are said to serve their sentences in dire conditions.

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Shelling briefly knocks out power at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

As a result, the company said, external power to the nuclear plant had been cut off and consumers in the Zaporizhzhia region had lost power.

A few hours later, Ukrenergo said that it had restored the external power line to the plant and that the system was running smoothly.

“The risk of a nuclear and radiation accident has been minimized, the situation is stable,” Ukraine’s state nuclear company, Energoatom, said in a statement later on Telegram.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had said that the outage made the situation at the plant “extremely vulnerable.” It was the seventh time since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 that the plant had lost its connection to external electricity, Mr. Grossi said.

Fighting in the surrounding area increases the risks to nuclear safety, according to Mr. Grossi, who has been trying for months to win international backing for a demilitarized zone around the plant.

A buildup of troops in the Zaporizhzhia region ahead of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area has added to concerns about nuclear safety.

The Russian occupation authorities this month ordered civilians living near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region to leave their homes and businesses, an apparent indication of growing fears about a Ukrainian military push.

At that time, Mr. Grossi said that the evacuation of the town closest to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had made the situation at the facility “increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous” and had added to the risk of an accident. Mr. Grossi also said that he was alarmed by the “increasingly tense, stressful, and challenging conditions for personnel and their families.”

Conditions for workers at the plant have been strained because of the presence of Russian troops and by a long-running effort by Russia’s state nuclear agency, Rosatom, to assume management.

Energoatom said last week that Moscow had increased the number troops stationed at the plant to more than 2,500 — which is more than the number of workers.

The path of a war is unpredictable. In Ukraine, it led to a quiet city in the east.

That was one long night of hundreds, as Bakhmut became the focal point of some of the fiercest fighting of the war — the object of acute desire for Russia and of a tenacious defense by Ukraine. And now, the city of Bakhmut appears to have fallen to the Russians after 10 months, leaving thousands of soldiers wounded or killed, and a lingering question: How did a nondescript city the world had never heard of become the place where both sides decided to fight to the end, no matter the cost?

“Seems all the vultures are here,” one soldier messaged me as throngs of journalists showed up when the city seemed on the brink of falling in March. “Where were you before it got this dire?”

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The war has stolen the normal experiences of teenage life.

They slip past soldiers in full combat gear, carrying rifles and headed to the trenches about 20 miles away, and watch military trucks rumble past, kicking up clouds of dust. They are living their teenage years in a holding pattern because of the war that rages around them — without prom, graduation ceremonies, movie theaters, parties or sports.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused tremendous direct damage, killing tens of thousands of people and forcing millions of Ukrainians from their homes. But the war has also claimed another casualty: the normal experiences of teenagers like those in Sloviansk who live near combat zones, hanging out in ravaged cities where rockets fly in regularly.

“I wish I had an ordinary life,” said a 16-year-old named Mykyta.

His days, he said, have boiled down to walks with friends and playing video games in his room. “We studied this whole city; we know every corner,” Mykyta said. “It’s not so fun anymore.”

During a meandering walk around town on a recent afternoon, a half-dozen teenagers said they mostly handled the hardships of war, and the terror of Russian attacks, with humor — making fun of everything around them, including one another. They agreed to interviews on the condition that only their first names be used, to protect their privacy.

Defense start-ups get praise in Ukraine, but face challenges at home.

As the United States seeks to maintain its national security advantage over China, Russia and other rivals, Pentagon leaders are only now beginning to figure out how to bring a Silicon Valley ethos to the lumbering military-industrial complex.

“This kind of change doesn’t always move as smoothly or as quickly as I’d like,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III conceded during a speech in December before a crowd in Simi Valley, Calif., that included executives from many start-up technology companies.

Industry executives refer to their situation as the “Valley of Death,” where the slow pace of government contracting can lead them to bleed out their funding while they await decisions. One San Francisco-based start-up, Primer Technologies, makes an artificial intelligence tool that analyzed thousands of hours of unencrypted Russian radio communications to help find targets, but has struggled to stay afloat as it has waited for major defense contracts.

“Small companies can’t just sit there twiddling their thumbs for two or three years until our contract gets in place,” Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said late last year at the Reagan National Defense Forum.