Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander said on Thursday.
Ukrainian servicemen head toward Bakhmut in a BMP infantry fighting vehicle, in eastern Ukraine on March 22, 2023. Aris Messinis/ AFP
Russia's Wagner mercenaries, trying to capture Bakhmut in what has become the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, "are losing considerable strength and are running out of steam," Syrskyi said on the Telegram social media site. But front lines in Ukraine have largely been frozen in place since Ukraine's last major offensive in November. Since then, Moscow has sent hundreds of thousands of freshly called-up reservists and convicts recruited from prisons into battles that both sides describe as a meat grinder.
There was no immediate response from Moscow to the latest claims its forces in Bakhmut were losing momentum, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary boss, has issued pessimistic statements in recent days warning of a Ukrainian counterassault. There was still a threat that Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut could be surrounded, it said, but there was "a realistic possibility the Russian assault on the town is losing the limited momentum it had obtained."This week, President Vladimir Putin made his grandest diplomatic gesture since launching the war a year ago, hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow for a three-day state visit.
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