Despite the slogan ‘Bakhmut stands!’, repeated by soldiers and politicians, a sense of grim inevitability has crept in
‘Proud to be a Ukrainian and proud to be Irish’ - Leinster backrow Alexi Soroka taking it one day at a time
“We were looking for children. We had an address where we were told some children might be living. How we approach individuals depends on the situation.” She shows pictures of the conditions that the civilians have been living in: damp, bare basements with flaking walls, many without any electricity, none with running water.
As both sides have poured more troops into the battle – the Russians in often-suicidal infantry assaults that have sought to swamp the defenders – and Ukrainian officials have spoken publicly about the possibility of withdrawal, the fighting has washed all around the city, threatening the last access routes.
Prigozhin, wearing a military uniform in the video, called on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to withdraw his forces from the small city. Among them was the US Institute for the Study of War, which said the move suggested “Ukrainian forces appear[ed] to be setting conditions for a controlled fighting withdrawal from parts of Bakhmut.”
The sense that the battle might be entering its last days has been reinforced by the preparation of new defensive lines further to the west, including around the nearby city of Kramatorsk, where new bunkers and trenches were being rapidly prepared.
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