Ukraine has decided to continue fighting in the ruined city of Bakhmut because the battle there is immobilizing Russia’s best units and degrading them ahead of a counteroffensive the Ukrainians have planned for this spring, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said, as cited by Reuters.

Mykhailo Podoliak’s statements are another signal of a change in Kyiv’s position, which decided to continue defending the small city in the east of the country, the theater of the bloodiest battle of this war, even though Moscow threw everything it could at it. fight back to try and secure his first win in over six months.

“Russia has changed tactics,” Podolyak said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa. “It has concentrated a significant part of its trained military personnel, the remnants of its professional army, as well as private (hiring) companies in Bakhmut,” he said. he said he explained.

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“Therefore we have two objectives: to reduce their competent personnel as much as possible and to squeeze them into a few key battles of attrition to interrupt their advance and concentrate our resources elsewhere for the spring counteroffensive. So, at this stage, Bakhmut acts to the full, even surpasses his main roles,” Podolyak added.

Russia made Bakhmut the main object of the winter offensive with the participation of hundreds of thousands of reservists and mercenaries. He managed to capture the eastern part of the city, the northern and southern outskirts, but he has not yet managed to close the circle around the Ukrainian defenders there.

Kyiv, which in early March appeared to be planning to withdraw to positions west of the city, announced earlier this week that its generals had decided to reinforce their troops in Bakhmut and continue the fight.

In the morning summary, the General Staff of Ukraine reported a large number of shelling on the front and noted that “the enemy does not stop attacking Bakhmut.”

Ukrainian general: The situation remains “very difficult”

The Institute for the Study of War said in its latest assessment published late Thursday that the Wagner Group’s offensive operation in eastern Bakhmut appears to have entered a tactical pause and that the Russian regular army appears to be the “first fiddle” in the offensive. to the city

The Ukrainian army prevented the Russian troops from encircling Bakhmut, but the situation on the battlefield in the area remains “very difficult”, the commander of the Ground Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Thursday.

In Moscow, they say that the capture of Bakhmut will be a step towards the capture of the entire Ukrainian industrial region of Donbass, which is the main goal. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that taking the city would disrupt Ukraine’s defenses and allow Moscow to advance into Ukrainian territory.

Intense trench warfare, described by both sides as a “meat grinder”, resulted in huge casualties. But Kiev’s decision to continue fighting rather than retreat was a sign that it considered Russia’s losses far greater than its own.

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