Kiev, Mar 3 (EFE).- The Ukrainian army has assured that its troops have the option of withdrawing from the eastern city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, where they are engaged in intense fighting with Russian troops, but that such a decision can only be will take if “absolutely necessary”.
“As long as the command sees that it makes sense to maintain a certain settlement, they will fight for it,” the spokesman for the Eastern Operational Command, Serhiy Cherevaty, said in statements to local Ukrainian television, referring to the situation in that city.
“If a tactical action has to be carried out, it will be done,” said the military, quoted by The Kyiv Independent.
The strategic city of Bakhmut has been, for weeks, the epicenter of the fighting between the Ukrainians and the Russians, since control of the area would allow the Moscow Army to seize a corridor in eastern Ukraine through which it could transport troops and material. in a safe way.
The group called Wagner also operates in this area, a mercenary unit linked to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and which is the Kremlin’s main assault force.
For now, Ukrainian forces are “heroically” clinging to the largely destroyed city, even “as Russia intensifies its deadly attack,” Cherevaty said in statements issued last night.
“The Bakhmut front fighters are heroically defending this segment of the front while exhausting, bleeding and weakening the enemy,” he added.
Some 5,000 civilians refuse to leave the city
The Ukrainian government has recently recognized the difficulties of its army in maintaining control of the area and has announced the send more reinforcements.
The head of the Wagner Group himself, the Russian oligarch Yevgueni Prigozhin, confirmed on Thursday that Ukraine is sending reinforcements to fight against his men and that the enemy offers, he explained, a “stubborn” resistance to retain the city.
“(The Ukrainians) send additional reserves to the forest next to Artiomovsk (Russian name for Bakhmut) and by all means try to hold the city,” Prigozhin said.
Wagner’s boss published a video on Friday with members of his mercenary army near the center of the city.
For some analysts, despite the worsening situation in Bakhmut for the Ukrainians, its defense is a strategically sound operation that will continue to force Russian troops to spend manpower and equipment on costly attacks.”
In the city, which once had a population of about 70,000, only about 5,000 remain, including 37 children, and most of them refuse to leave their homes, Donetsk Region Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Thursday. .