Despite a recent easing of combat in Bakhmut, clashes around the obliterated city in eastern Ukraine continue with Moscow suffering significant losses, Kyiv’s armed forces said on Sunday (Jun 4).
Ukraine’s top military command said in its daily report on Sunday that Russian forced had carried out two unsuccessful operations around Bakhmut and launched a number of air strikes and artillery shelling on nearby villages.
The head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group said on Saturday that 99 per cent of his fighters had left Bakhmut after their months-long assault in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.
Ukraine said late last month that fighting had eased in the area, but the commander of the nation’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces continued their fight there.
“The enemy continues to suffer significant losses in the Bakhmut direction,” Syrskyi said on the Telegram messaging app after what he said was a visit to troops around Bakhmut. “Defence forces continue to fight. We will win.”
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Bakhmut, once home to 70,000 people, has no strategic value, according to military analysts. But Moscow has said capturing it would be a stepping stone to advance deeper into the industrial region of Donbas, which it claims to have annexed from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has compared Bakhmut’s destruction to the US atomic bomb attack on Japan’s Hiroshima in World War II.
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