The Ukrainian military command has ordered the withdrawal of one of its elite units from Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has become the epicenter of Russian military operations for months, reports Unian.

Its commander, Robert Brovdi, announced the withdrawal of the “Birds of Magyar” drone unit.

“At midnight on March 2, the unit received a combat order to immediately withdraw from Bakhmut to a new place of hostilities. What are the reasons for the transfer from Bakhmut when I was on duty here for 110 days? First of all, I am a military man, so I will not comment on the command’s orders (…) I gave myself and you a word not to engage in politics,” he said in a video published on social networks.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the operational command “East”, which is responsible for this front, have not yet commented on the information.

The unit commanded by Brovdi, known on social media as Magyar, is a tactical reconnaissance formation using unmanned aerial vehicles. The unit became famous in social networks largely thanks to a video published by its commander, one of the most famous Ukrainian soldiers.

Numerous videos posted on social media in recent months of the fighting around Bakhmut, where Russian forces launched an offensive in early August, have shown the crucial role of reconnaissance drones on this stretch of the front, where they are used to coordinate artillery. strikes and ground action.

What is happening around Bakhmut

Deputy Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Volodymyr Nazarenko, in an interview with the Ukrainian radio station NV late on Thursday, said that the situation in Bakhmut is critical, but Kyiv troops are desperately defending the city and digging new trenches, trying to hold it. Russian attackers.

“[Rușii] they don’t think about casualties when they try to storm a city. The task of our forces near Bakhmut is to inflict as many losses as possible on the enemy. Every meter of Ukrainian land costs the enemy hundreds of lives,” he said.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleg Zhdanov said on Thursday night that over the past day, Ukrainian troops have repelled more than 170 attacks on five main areas of the front line.

Zhdanov reported that the Russians are trying to surround Bakhmut from the north, east and south, and said that the area in the west “is probably the only sector of Bakhmut where the initiative belongs to our troops, not the Russian occupiers.”

The General Staff in Kyiv released an assessment on Thursday that suggests a Russian presence inside the city, not just on the outskirts.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Thursday that Russian forces “advanced into Bakhmut and continued ground attacks around the city”.

The fighting here, which was initially waged by mercenaries of Wagner’s PMK Yevgeny Prigozhin, was for several months some of the fiercest since the war began in late December last year.

Jakub Yanovsky, one of the military analysts who writes articles for Oryx, a well-known website that tracks military equipment and casualties on both sides of the war in Ukraine, described the fighting here in October as a veritable “meat grinder” for the Russians. army

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