In Bakhmut, Ukraine is facing increasingly strong pressure from the Russian military, British military intelligence said in its latest assessment on the intense fighting taking place in and around the eastern city. Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, the British Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence bulletin, adding that regular Russian forces and the privateer Wagner Group forces had made further progress in the suburbs.
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Here are the main points of Ukraine facing Russia in Bakhmut:
1. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post that Russian troops were trying but failed to encircle Bakhmut, Reuters reported.
2. Russia’s victory in Bakhmut can give Russia its first major victory in the last seven months.
3. Ukraine’s chief military affairs analyst Oleh Zhdanov said he could not detect any immediate indication that Kiev was going to order a retreat from Bakhmut.
4. “At the moment the situation is more or less stable. In terms of the advance of Russian troops, we practically stopped (it),” said Oleh Zhdanov.
5. The British Ministry of Defense said that two major bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed within the last 36 hours.
6. The UK Ministry of Defense said that re-supply routes from the city to the Ukrainian-held city were becoming increasingly limited.
7. One of those bridges connects Bakhmut to the Ukrainian-occupied city of Chasiv Yar, the city’s last main supply route.
8. The Ukrainian General Staff said that Russian attacks were repulsed in the villages of Vasukivka, Orikhovo-Vasilyvka, Dubovo-Vasilyvka and Hryhorivka.
9. Russia had earlier said that Bakhmut would be an important step towards completing the annexation of the Donbass region, one of Moscow’s most important objectives.
