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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had reduced the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to rubble, while the Ukrainian military reported Saturday that several parts of the country had been hit by missiles, rockets and air strikes, areas Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.
The latest battle in Russia’s 9.5-month-long war in Ukraine centers on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin successfully — illegally — claimed to annex in late September.
The battle demonstrates Russia’s struggle to establish control over the areas, which Ukraine insists on taking back.
The situation in several front-line cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces “remains very difficult,” Zelensky said. Together, these provinces make up the Donbass, a sprawling industrial region on the border with Russia that Putin has identified as a focus from the start of the war, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is not a single place on the land in these regions that has not been damaged by shells and fire,” Zelensky said in his nighttime video address, calling the shots again. become the target city.
“The occupiers virtually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbass city that Russian troops reduced to rubble.”
Some buildings still stand in Bachmut, and the remaining residents still roam the streets. But like Mariupol and other contested cities, it has endured a prolonged siege and was left without water and electricity for weeks even before Moscow launched a massive strike that wiped out utilities across Ukraine.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, estimated seven weeks ago that 90 percent of the city’s pre-war population of more than 70,000 people had fled since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbass.
Ukraine’s military general staff reported missile strikes, about 20 air strikes and more than 60 rocket attacks across Ukraine between Friday and Saturday.
Spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active fighting took place in the Bakhmut area, where more than 20 populated places were attacked. He said Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.
Russia launched a heavy offensive in the east and managed to capture almost all of Luhansk during the summer. Donetsk has avoided the same fate, with analysts and Ukrainian officials saying the Russian military has poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut in recent weeks in an attempt to encircle the city.
Fighting over Bakhmut has intensified after Ukrainian troops recaptured the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, suggesting Putin wants clear results after weeks of apparent setbacks in Ukraine.
Seizing Bakhmut would cut off Ukrainian supply lines and open a path for Russian forces to Kramatorsk and Slovyansk – key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Russia has been attacking Bakhmut with rockets for more than half a year. The ground attack accelerated after its forces forced the Ukrainians out of Lugansk in July.
But some analysts have questioned Russia’s strategic logic in its relentless pursuit of Bahmut and surrounding areas, which have also been heavily shelled over the past few weeks, with Ukrainian officials reporting some residents living in dank basements.
“The cost of six months of brutal, hard-fought and attrition-based fighting over #Bakhmut far outweighs any operational advantage #Russians have gained from taking Bakhmut,” the Institute for War Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said in its push on Thursday. Special release.
Russian forces also advanced the Donbass offensive in the direction of Leman, the city of Donetsk, 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Bakhmut, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. According to the ministry, they “managed to occupy a more favorable position for further promotion.”
Russian troops first occupied the city in May but withdrew in early October. Ukrainian authorities said at the time they had found landmines on the bodies of dead Russian soldiers that exploded when someone tried to clean them up, as well as the bodies of civilian residents killed by shelling or from lack of food and food . drug.
On Friday, Putin lashed out at recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said a 2015 peace deal between France and Germany over eastern Ukraine bought Ukraine time to prepare for war with Russia this year.
The deal is aimed at easing tensions after pro-Russian separatists seized territory in the Donbass a year ago, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that escalated into war with Russia itself after a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian military also reported airstrikes in other provinces: Kharkov and Sumy in the northeast, Dnepropetrovsk in central Ukraine, Zaporozhya in the southeast and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, are four regions that Putin claims are now part of Russian territory.
A month ago, Russian troops withdrew from the western side of the Dnieper River, which runs through Kherson province, allowing Ukrainian troops to declare the liberation of the region’s capital. But the Russians still held most of the province and continued to attack from press positions across the river.
Kirillo Tymoshenko, deputy director of Zelensky’s office, wrote on Telegram that two civilians had been killed and eight others wounded in dozens of mortar, rocket and artillery attacks the previous day. Residential areas, hospitals, shops, warehouses and critical infrastructure were damaged in the Kherson region, he said.
In the west, drone strikes left much of Odessa province, including the Black Sea port city of the same name, without power overnight, regional governor Maxim Marchenko said. Power company DTEK said on Saturday that some energy facilities were immediately destroyed and all customers were without power except hospitals, maternity units, boiler plants and pumping stations.
The energy department of the Odessa regional government said late Saturday that it could take up to three months to fully restore power and urged families who lost power to leave the area if possible.
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