A Ukrainian tank on the front line near Bakhmut, March 1, 2023.
Kyiv/Washington – Ukrainian defenders of the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine have taken a new defensive position position in an attempt to resist dozens of Russian attacks in the area, Reuters reports today. The Ukrainska Pravda website, citing the head of the Ukrainian Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote that Russian losses in the vicinity of Bakhmut are up to seven times higher than Ukrainian losses, but the information cannot be independently verified.
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Photo gallery: Russian invasion of Ukraine
Reuters, citing Ukrainian military sources, writes that in the last 24 hours, Russian troops have carried out almost two hundred attacks in five key areas of the front line near Bakhmut, which they have been trying to capture since the beginning of August. The attacks are accompanied by heavy artillery fire, which also hit the village of Časiv Jar west of Bakhmut and several other villages in the last day. In the south of the country in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the Russian army shelled around 40 villages.
According to Volodymyr Nazarenko, an officer of the Ukrainian National Guard, the new Ukrainian defenses at Bakhmut consist of trenches in the surrounding towns and villages located 20 to 40 meters apart. “We need as much ammunition as possible. The number of enemy soldiers does not matter, the technology matters,” said Nazarenko.
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in its regular report on the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield said that Russian forces are likely to have dampened efforts to encircle Bakhmut and are instead concentrating pressure on Ukrainian defenders to withdraw from the city on their own. The main direction of the attacks is now north-west of the city, apparently with the aim of forcing the Ukrainians to retreat along practically the last free access road T0504 towards the west. Similar tactics were used by the Russians during last year's conquest of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, ISW reminds.
The war in Ukraine will be the central topic of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to the White House today, and the United States will announce another package of military aid for Ukraine today, according to the media. an army worth 400 billion dollars (about 8.8 billion crowns). This will primarily contain specially modified GMLRS ammunition for HIMARS missile systems, ammunition for Bradley fighting vehicles or pontoon bridges.
