Moscow has acknowledged that its troops had fallen back north of the battlefield town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, in a retreat that Russian private army chief Wagner called a “rout”.
The setback for Russia comes on the heels of reports of Ukrainian advances around the city and suggests a coordinated effort by Kiev to encircle Russian forces in Bakhmut, which had been Moscow’s main target for months during the war’s bloodiest fighting.
It means both sides are now reporting the largest Ukrainian gains in six months, though Ukraine has offered few details and downplayed suggestions that a long-planned counter-offensive had officially begun.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Ukraine had launched an attack north of Bakhmut involving more than 1,000 troops and up to 40 tanks, a size that, if confirmed, would amount to the largest Ukrainian offensive since November.
The Russians had repelled 26 attacks, but troops in one area had fallen back to regroup in more favorable positions near the Berkhivka reservoir northwest of Bakhmut, Konashenkov said.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner forces that led the campaign in the city, said in an audio message: “What Konashenkov described is unfortunately called ‘a defeat’ and not a regrouping”.
In a separate video message, Prigozhin said the Ukrainians had captured higher ground overlooking Bakhmut and opened the main road to the city from the west.
“The loss of the Berkhivka reservoir — the loss of this area that they gave up — that’s five square kilometers, just today,” Prigozhin said.
“The enemy has completely cleared the Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut road that we had blocked. The enemy can now use this road and secondly they have taken a tactical high round under which Bakhmut is located,” said Prigozhin, who has repeatedly condemned Russia’s regular army over the past week for failing to supply its troops in Bakhmut.
Ukraine typically withholds commentary on its operations as they are underway, and the military command has said only that its troops have advanced about two kilometers near Bakhmut.
‘Lines switch back and forth’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he met with top military commanders on Friday, noting General Oleksandr Syrskyi reported that his troops “stopped the enemy and even pushed him back in some directions.”
In his nightly speech to the Ukrainian people, Zelenskyy praised his troops and pointed out the low morale of the Russian armed forces.
“The occupiers are already mentally prepared for defeat. They have already lost this war in their minds,” he said. “We have to push them every day so that their sense of defeat turns into their retreat, their mistakes, their losses.”
In a statement posted to Telegram on Friday, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar confirmed that Ukrainian forces were gaining ground around Bakhmut, echoing statements made by military commanders earlier this week.
In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US determined Bakhmut remained disputed territory.
“The Ukrainians have not given up on their defense of Bakhmut and the Russians have not given up on trying to take Bakhmut,” Kirby said. “Every day the lines change back and forth. I mean, sometimes block by block.”
Other fighting has left at least two dead and 22 wounded elsewhere in the country since Thursday, according to figures from the Ukrainian president’s office.
Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said a Russian attack hit Kramatorsk, where some Ukrainian military units are stationed, destroying a school and a residential building. Russian shelling hit 11 towns and villages in the region, killing 12 civilians, he said.
Moscow has been preparing for an expected attack since late last year and has built rows of anti-tank fortifications along hundreds of kilometers of the front.
It has begun evacuating civilians living near the conflict zone in Ukraine’s partially occupied Zaporizhia province.
In comments published on Friday, the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet said defenses were also tightened amid a spate of Ukrainian drone strikes against its home base, the Crimean port of Sevastopol.