Moscow media claim that Russian troops have reached a kilometer from the Ukrainian city of Chasiv Yar, which is called the “Gateway to Bakhmut”, and the command in Kyiv says that there is fierce fighting in the direction of the city.

“The Russian army has about one kilometer left to the outskirts of Chasiv Yar on the Artemiv front,” writes pravda.ru, using the Russian name Bakhmut, without citing sources.

Izvestia, Russia’s oldest daily, instead quoted Yan Gagin, a military adviser to Denys Pushylin, the leader of pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, as saying on Wednesday that “Russian artillery and aviation are operating on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “from the Yar times.

Like Bakhmut, Chasiv Yar, a town with a population of about 12,500 before the start of the war, is located in the Donetsk region.

“Chasiv Yar is already in the line of sight of our fighters. group [de forțe ucrainene din oraș] It is significant that the Ukrainian units that survived in Artemivsk retreated there,” Gagin said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

He said Ukrainian forces had managed to re-establish strong fortifications in the town of Chasiv Yar, about 15 kilometers west of Bakhmut, in the months since they withdrew from Bakhmut at the end of May last year, but they had “limited resources”.

“There is a crisis of staffing of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and all resources – both personnel and equipment – are limited. The command is juggling reserves, splitting between sections of the front,” the Russian military officer also said.

The battles around Chasiv Yaru, overshadowed by the battles for Bakhmut

The new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, stated on January 3 that the Russians had resumed offensive actions around Chasy Yar, but at that time all attention was focused on the battles for Avdiivka.

Sirskyi visited the troops in Chasiv Yar on February 8, when the command of the Ground Forces of Ukraine announced the “tense” situation on this part of the front.

“The enemy is trying to break through our defenses in the Chasiv Yar area and is resorting to local actions of small assault groups under the cover of drones and artillery. It makes extensive use of kamikaze drones and uses electronic warfare. The situation is tense, it requires constant monitoring of the situation and quick decision-making directly on the ground,” the statement of the command quoted by the Ukrainian press reads.

This Wednesday, the Ukrainian agency Unian notes that the Ukrainian defense forces “with titanic efforts do not allow the Russian occupiers to approach the commanding heights of Chasiv Yar in the direction of Bakhmut, in order to prevent the occupation of the city by the enemy.”

Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the drone division of the 92nd Airborne Assault Brigade, noted that the situation “remains quite difficult.”

“Why? Because for the enemy, the direction to Bakhmut is one of the priorities. His main task is to restore the positions lost during the summer-autumn counteroffensive operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he said, referring to the successes of Ukrainian troops in the east of the country during the 2023 offensive .

At the end of October last year, General Sirsky announced that Russian troops had seized the initiative on the Bakhmut Front, switching from defensive to “active actions.” His statement came just days before General Valery Zaluzhnyi, then commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, hinted that Kyiv’s offensive had failed.

Russia’s victory in Chesiv Yar could have serious consequences for Ukraine

Fedorenko explained to UNIAN on Wednesday why Chasiv Yar is so important to the Russian military, saying they will do “everything possible and impossible to capture it.”

“Why is this important to the enemy? Because Chasiv Yar is on a commanding height, and if the enemy takes it, he can have in his sights Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, and therefore the city of Kramatorsk.”

With a population of around 147,000 before the start of the war in February 2022, Kramatorsk is the administrative center of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, as the oblast’s city of the same name was captured by pro-Russian separatists during the Donbas war they launched in 2014.

It is 25 kilometers from Chasiv Yar to Kramatorsk.

Fedorenko stated that that is why the Ukrainian defenders are doing everything possible and making “titanic efforts” so that the Russians could not enter the city and the fighting was going on both during the day and at night, and “the enemy uses sufficiently active aviation with guided bombs.”

Although it is unclear how close the Russians managed to get to the city, US broadcaster CBS News described Chasiv Yar in a report on Wednesday as a “front-line city” and showed it being periodically shelled by Russian forces.

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