No imminent sign of retreat amid heavy fighting in Ukraine’s Bakhmut

Ukrainian forces in the eastern city of Bakhmut are facing increasingly severe pressure from Russian forces, British military intelligence said, as intense fire exchange took place in and around the city.

Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, while the regular Russian army has made further advances into Bakhmut's northern suburbs, the British Defense Ministry said on Saturday in its daily intelligence bulletin.

A prominent Ukrainian military analyst, Oleh Zhdanov, said late on Saturday that he could not detect any imminent signs that Kiev was going to order a retreat from the besieged city of Bakhmut, despite the intense pressure.

"At the moment, the situation is more or less stabilized. In terms of the advancement of Russian troops, we practically stopped (it)," he said in a YouTube interview.

The Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff said late on Saturday that it had repelled Russian attacks in the villages of Vasyukivka, Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Dubovo-Vasylivka, and Hryhorivka, all of which are just north of Bakhmut’s city center.

It is now too dangerous to leave Bakhmut by vehicle, a Ukrainian army representative told The Associated Press, so people are being advised to evacuate on foot.

According to UK military intelligence officials and other Western analysts, Ukrainian forces have destroyed two key bridges just outside the city, including one to Chasiv Yar, cutting off their last remaining resupply route.

The Institute for the Study of War said that by destroying the Chasiv Yar Bridge, Ukrainian forces may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” as they make it more difficult for Russians to pursue them.

Meanwhile, Russia said that Bakhmut would be a stepping stone and a rare battlefield gain in completing the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of Moscow’s most important objectives.

Russian artillery has been pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut while trying to complete the encirclement of the besieged city.

Once, Bakhmut had a population of 70,000 and was known for salt and gypsum mines, but has now reduced to only around 4,000 people, who all live in shelters without gas, electricity, or water.

Russia launched the war on Ukraine on February 24, 2022 to "de-Nazify" the country and over the perceived threat of the ex-Soviet republic joining the US-led NATO. Kiev and its allies, however, say they were baseless pretexts for imperial ambitions.

Since the onset of the war, the United States and Ukraine's other allies have sent Kiev tens of billions of dollars' worth of weapons, including rocket systems, drones, armored vehicles, tanks, and communication systems.

Western countries have also imposed a slew of economic sanctions on Moscow. The Kremlin has said the sanctions and the Western military assistance will prolong the war.

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