Russian advance stalls in Ukraine's Bakhmut, think tank says

KIEV

Russia’s advance seems to have stalled in Moscow's campaign to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, a leading think tank said in an assessment of the longest ground battle of the war.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said there were no confirmed advances by Russian forces in Bakhmut. Russian forces and units from the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary Wagner Group continued to launch ground attacks in the city, but there was no evidence that they were able to make any progress, the ISW said.

The founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said Sunday on the Telegram messaging app that the situation in Bakhmut was “difficult, very difficult, with the enemy fighting for each meter.”

The ISW report issued Saturday cited the spokesperson of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Eastern Group, Serhii Cherevaty, who said that fighting in the Bakhmut area had been more intense this week than the previous one. According to Cherevaty, there were 23 clashes in the city over the previous 24 hours.

The ISW’s report comes following claims of Russian progress earlier this week. The U.K. Defense Ministry said Saturday that paramilitary units from the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group had seized most of eastern Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city now marking the front line of the fighting. The assessment highlighted that Russia’s assault will be difficult to sustain without more significant personnel losses.

The mining city of Bakhmut is located in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, one of four regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last year. Russia’s military opened the campaign to take control of Bakhmut in August, and both sides have experienced staggering casualties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed not to retreat.

In its latest report, the U.K. Defense Ministry said Sunday that the impact of heavy Russian military casualties in Ukraine varies dramatically across Russia. The British military's intelligence update said Moscow and St. Petersburg remained “relatively unscathed,” particularly among members of Russia's elite.

In many of Russia’s eastern regions, however, the death rate as a percentage of the population is “30-40 times higher than in Moscow,” the U.K. ministry said. It added that ethnic minorities often take the biggest hit. In the southern Astrakhan region, for example, about “75% of casualties come from the minority Kazakh and Tartar populations.”

Russia’s mounting casualties are reflected in a loss of government control over the country’s information sphere, the Institute for the Study of War said. The think tank said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed “infighting in the Kremlin inner circle” and that the Kremlin has effectively ceded control over the country’s information space, with Putin unable to readily regain control.

The ISW saw Zakharova’s comments, made at a forum on the “practical and technological aspects of information and cognitive warfare in modern realities” in Moscow, as “noteworthy” and in line with the think tank’s long standing assessments about the “deteriorating Kremlin regime and information space control dynamics.”

In a separate statement, Zakharova said Sunday that the next round of talks regarding extending the Black Sea grain deal would take place Monday in Geneva. A Russian delegation is expected to meet with top U.N. officials. The deal currently is set to expire on March 18.

The wartime agreement that unblocked grain shipments from Ukraine and helped temper rising global food prices was last extended by four months in November.

Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food to countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia where millions of impoverished people lack enough to eat. Russia was also the world’s top exporter of fertilizer before the war.

A loss of those supplies following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had pushed up global food prices and fueled concerns of a hunger crisis in poorer countries.

Zelensky said Sunday that he posthumously conferred the highest national title, Hero of Ukraine, on a soldier who is thought to have been killed by Russian-speakers. Zelensky identified him as Oleksandr Matsiyevsky, although the Ukrainian military previously gave a different name for the soldier pending final confirmation.

A brief video that surfaced this month and caused a national outcry in Ukraine showed a man standing and smoking a cigarette in a wooded area and exclaiming “Glory to Ukraine” before being cut down with gunfire. Senior Ukrainian officials alleged, without providing further evidence, that the man was an unarmed prisoner of war killed by Russian soldiers.

Matsiyevsky was “a Ukrainian warrior. A man who will be known and remembered forever," Zelensky said. Ukraine's national security service, the SBU, said Matsiyevsky had served as a sniper and was shot on Dec. 30.

Ukrainian authorities reported Sunday morning that Russian attacks over the past day killed at least five people and wounded another seven across Ukraine’s Donetsk and Kherson regions, local Ukrainian authorities reported Sunday morning.

Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that two people were killed in the region, one in the city of Kostyantynivka and one in the village of Tonenke. Four civilians were wounded.

Also in the Donetsk province, Sloviansk Mayor Vadim Lyakh said the power grid and railway lines were damaged by Russian shelling on Sunday, but didn't report any casualties.

Local officials in the southern Kherson province confirmed that Russian forces fired 29 times on Ukrainian-controlled territory in the region on Saturday, with residential areas of the regional capital, Kherson, coming under fire three times. Three people died in the province and a further three were wounded.

A woman was wounded in Russian shelling in the village of Bilozerka on Sunday, just outside Kherson.

In Kharkiv province, three districts came under fire, but no civilian casualties were reported.

The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitali Kim, said the town of Ochakiv at the mouth of the Dnieper River came under artillery fire early Sunday. Cars were set ablaze and private houses and high-rise buildings sustained damage. No casualties were reported.