Russian troops are trying to make an important gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Victory Day itself, May 9, when the Russian Federation commemorates its victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, marked each year with a military parade in Red Square. Although founder Wagner announced his resignation, Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to have changed his mind and Moscow’s troops are intensifying their attack on Bakhmut, a city they have been trying to capture for months at an extremely high cost.

Kyiv says Moscow is making a last-ditch effort to capture the town of Bakhmut after nearly 10 months of fierce fighting to give President Vladimir Putin the only reward for Russia’s costly Victory Day winter offensive, Reuters reports.

During the winter campaign, which was extremely expensive for Russia, Putin’s troops did not capture almost any territory, except for the small eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who visited the front lines in the area, said on Sunday: “The Russians still hope to capture the city by May 9. Our task is to prevent this.”

Russian forces in Bakhmut are led by Wagner, a paramilitary group that has recruited thousands of convicts from prisons.

Last week, Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin announced he would resign from Bakhmut, condemning the regular army for not providing his fighters with enough ammunition, but on Sunday he reversed the decision, saying he had been promised the necessary weapons.

Apocalyptic images from Bakhmut

In the images that appear on social networks, little remains of the city, which once housed 70,000 souls.

Many buildings are smoking, footage from drones shows.

According to a high-ranking official of the Ukrainian army, Ukrinfrom reports, Russia would have lost about 100,000 soldiers at Bakhmut.

“But these are approximate calculations. I am sure that further checks will show that this number will only increase. This is natural, because the enemy uses so-called meat attacks as the main way of waging war,” said the spokesman of the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Serhiy Cherevat, on Ukrainian state television.

War Monitor published the progress of Russian forces on the capture of Bakhmut, a town that is not necessarily of strategic importance to either camp.

But both armies involved in the bloody battles believe the historic Battle of Bakhmut is meant to cut equipment, ammunition and personnel so that the fighting power on both sides is lower.

City battles in Bakhmut

According to images published on Russian channels and shared on social media, urban fighting is raging in the city, showing Wagner’s mercenaries trying to “clear” a building in Bakhmut, while Kyiv forces still control several square kilometers of the site where Ukrainian soldiers. call “hell on earth”

Roman Trokhymets, a Ukrainian soldier fighting in Bakhmut, wrote on Twitter that he cannot describe the hell in Bakhmut.

The Ukrainian military showed footage from the front, as well as from the field hospital where the heroes of Kyiv are being treated.

The Russians fired at Bakhmut with phosphorous incendiary ammunition, several Ukrainian officials were accused.

On Friday evening, in Telegram, the Special Operations Forces of the Ukrainian army released several videos of the shelling of the town of Bakhmut with incendiary ammunition – without specifying when they were captured.

Phosphorus weapons are incendiary weapons, the use of which is prohibited against civilians, but not against military targets, according to the Convention signed in 1980 in Geneva.

Kyiv accused Moscow of using them several times since the start of the war, including against civilians, but the Russian military categorically denied this.

The Russians were also accused of using white phosphorus during the bombing of the former Azovstal plant in Mariupol, as well as during the retreat from Snake Island.

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