Kyiv’s gains near Bakhmut raise alarms in Russia that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has begun.
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KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian Army is advancing in localized attacks near the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian commanders said on Friday, in fighting that has shifted the front line only slightly but is setting off alarms in Russia that Kyiv’s long-anticipated counteroffensive has begun.
Ukrainian soldiers broke through Russian lines south of the city on Wednesday and have since exploited this breach and assaulted Russian forces elsewhere near Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military said, threatening their flanks to the north and south.
Bakhmut has been at the epicenter of the war in eastern Ukraine for months and had been the only location on the about 600-mile front where Russia was consistently on the attack. That changed this week.
Videos released on Friday by Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade showed soldiers piling out of armored personnel carriers and assaulting a Russian trench. “Forward, forward!” a soldier yelled in the video filmed on a helmet camera. The soldiers dived for cover as Russian fighters threw a hand grenade, then ran forward and threw their own grenade into a Russian bunker. The video could not be independently verified.
Andriy Biletsky, who has ultimate command of the brigade, among other units in the Ukrainian Army, said on Friday that his forces were continuing the counterattack near Bakhmut.
A drone operator in the Adam Tactical Group, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Sem, said “we advanced a little more on our flank.” In an interview on Friday, he described a seesaw battle to the south of Bakhmut overnight in which Russian soldiers tried to recapture a position but were repelled with a Ukrainian artillery bombardment.
A retreat from Bakhmut would represent an embarrassing setback for the Russian military. Now mostly ruins, Bakhmut is not seen as strategically important but has become a symbolic prize. Russia, which has not captured a Ukrainian city since last July, had pressed ahead despite soaring losses.
It was difficult to gauge whether Ukraine’s advances would be sustained. Russian forces had at one point flushed Ukrainian troops out of all but a few blocks in the city.
Ukrainian advances this week have cut through Russian lines in the largest bulge by only about three miles, but that success erased gains Moscow’s forces painstakingly achieved over several months.
That is presenting Russia with a difficult choice. If Russia does not reinforce the flanking positions around Bakhmut, it risks a politically humiliating setback. But if it diverts reserve forces there, it could weaken defenses in the south.
Ukrainian officials have downplayed the advances and have not portrayed them as the start of a widely anticipated counteroffensive.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview with the BBC this week, said Ukraine wanted more weaponry and ammunition to arrive before it would begin the offensive.
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, also has taken pains to distinguish the attacks in Bakhmut from the broader offensive. In a statement on Wednesday he described Ukraine’s actions there as mostly defensive in nature, saying that Ukrainian soldiers have been able to “carry out effective counterattacks.”
“In some areas of the front, the enemy could not withstand the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers,” he said.
But Russian military bloggers have responded with alarm to Kyiv’s gains in the north and south of Bakhmut. The bloggers, who often report from the front lines and can be influential within Russia, are fiercely pro-war and want Moscow to commit more resources to the fight.
Aleksandr Yaremchuk, a Russian military correspondent aligned with the Wagner mercenary group, wrote that, “Wagner gave a lot of blood and sweat for this territory, some gave their lives. It’s hard for me to believe that other units are so easily abandoning their positions.”
Their outcry elicited a rare direct response from Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which denied a turn for the worse in the battle. “Declarations on Telegram about a ‘breakthrough’ on several points on the front line do not correspond to reality,” it said in a statement.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner and whose fighters have led the nearly yearlong fight for Bakhmut, appeared to support the bloggers’ assessment of Ukrainian breakthroughs.
On Thursday, Mr. Prigozhin posted an open letter to Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, about the losses on the flanking positions, saying that “the enemy carried out several successful counterattacks.”
Anatoly Kurmanaev and Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.
— Marc Santora and Andrew E. Kramer
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