Russians intensify assault on Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces try to dig in

Russian forces carried out relentless attacks on Bakhmut on Wednesday, trying to encircle the small eastern Ukrainian city and claim their first major prize for more than half a year after some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.

Reuters was able to reach Bakhmut from the west on Monday, proof that the city was not yet surrounded despite Russian forces pressing from north and south to close the last remaining routes in.

Flames and smoke rose into the sky from blazing buildings. Constant gunfire and explosions rang out into the sky. Ukrainian armoured vehicles roared through the streets, while stray dogs wandered amid the mud and debris.

Thousands of residents remain inside the ruined city from a pre-war population of around 70,000.

"It is frightening indeed," said a middle-aged man bundled in a coat and wooly hat on the steps of his apartment block.

"I can hardly move my legs – they barely move – from the stress of the situation," he said. "As long as my home is intact and I am not hurt, I will stay here."

In the town of Chasiv Yar to the west, a grocery shop was ablaze.

"We won't give up Bakhmut. We will hold on to it until the very last," a 25-year-old army medic headed towards the front told Reuters. "Glory to Ukraine, death to the enemies."

In a briefing on Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian military said: "The enemy continues to advance in the direction of Bakhmut. He does not stop storming the city of Bakhmut."

Difficult situation

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video address late on Tuesday, said the battle for Bakhmut was "most difficult" but its defence was essential.

"Russia in general takes no account of people and sends them in constant waves against our positions, the intensity of the fighting is only increasing," Zelenskyy said.

Russia's state-run RIA news agency released a video clip it said showed Russian Su-25 fighter jets roaring over Bakhmut.

"We are glad they are ours," says a man in the clip identified as a fighter of the mercenary Wagner Group, adding the jets helped them "psychologically".

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russian forces had driven a wedge between two villages north of Bakhmut, Berkhivka and Yahidne, a "breakthrough on Bakhmut's northern flank" that "poses a clear threat to us". Reuters could not verify that report.

The area around Bakhmut has been the one part of the front where Russia has made substantial gains during a winter offensive that has seen what both sides describe as the bloodiest fighting of the war.

After losing extensive territory in the second half of 2022, Russian forces have been replenished by hundreds of thousands of reservists called up since September.

Kyiv, for its part, has stuck mainly to defence over the past three months, hoping the assault will exhaust Russia's attacking forces before Ukraine launches a counter-attack later this year with new weapons including tanks promised by the West.

Fighting near Bakhmut has been led by Wagner, which has recruited tens of thousands of convicts from prisons and sent them to the front.

Its boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has accused the top brass of the regular Russian army of treason for inadequately supplying his men in one of the biggest signs of internal conflict in Moscow.

Wagner received an apparent show of Kremlin support on Wednesday when Russia's rubber-stamp lower house of parliament, the State Duma, weighed plans to extend censorship laws to include a 15-year jail sentence for those who discredit "volunteer formations" fighting in the war.

"This initiative will protect everyone who today is risking their lives to ensure the security of the country and our citizens," Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on social media. "The punishment for violators will be severe."

Ukrainians and Russians traditionally view 1 March as the first day of spring. Already, frozen ground has melted at the front, bringing the "rasputitsa" – a season of sucking black mud notorious in military history for destroying armies attempting to attack across the territory of Ukraine and western Russia.

Ukrainians boasted that arrival of warmer weather proved Russia had failed to freeze them into submission with missile and drone attacks that targeted energy infrastructure around the country since October.

"So, did you manage to freeze us? Happy first day of Ukrainian spring!" tweeted Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council.

The war loomed over a meeting of foreign ministers from the G20 group of big economies in New Delhi, to be attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as well as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Host India does not want Ukraine to dominate the event but it will top the agenda, said an Indian foreign ministry official.

Western countries want the meeting to condemn the war. A senior European Union official said Brussels would not support a statement from the meeting unless it included such condemnation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday repeated Moscow's stance that it is open to peace negotiations but Ukraine and its Western allies must accept Russia's annexation of Ukrainian land. Ukraine says there can be no peace unless Russia withdraws from all its territory.