Fierce fighting in Bakhmut

UKRAINE fought off a fresh Russian assault on the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, its leaders said on Saturday, as it endured a wave of shelling in the disputed Donetsk region.

Officials meanwhile recovered the bodies of two British volunteers, killed trying to help evacuate people from the eastern war zone.

And the southern city of Odesa suffered a massive power cut affecting half a million households after an accident at a war-damaged electrical substation.

“This week, the Russian occupation forces threw all their efforts into breaking through our defence and encircling Bakhmut, and launched a powerful offensive in the Lyman sector,” said Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar.

Ukraine’s border guard service reported that its soldiers had stopped the latest attack, killing four and wounding seven of the opposing forces.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russian military company the Wagner Group that is fighting in the Russian operation in Ukraine, said yesterday that battles for the city of Bakhmut, are waged for each street and house as Ukrainian troops are not backing down.

“Let me clarify the situation. The Ukrainian armed forces are not retreating anywhere. They fight to the last. Fierce battles are waged for every street, house and stairwell in the northern quarters of Artyomovsk,” Prigozhin said.

He said it was reassuring to see media reports about Ukrainian servicemen withdrawing from the city, but in fact that was not the case.

The hotly-contested Bakhmut, north of the city of Donetsk, is an important transport hub for supplying Ukrainian troops stationed in Donbas. Russia unleashed a fresh wave of bombardment across the eastern front lines on Saturday morning. Ukrainian officials reported shelling in the Chernigiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv Lugansk, Donetsk and Mykolaiv regions.

In his evening address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation was getting tougher.

Russia, he said, was “throwing more and more of its forces at breaking down our defence”.

“It is very difficult now in Bakhmut, Vugledar, Lyman and other areas,” he added, referring to the frontline cities in the east of the country.

France, Italy and the US on Friday all promised fresh deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, while Canada shipped the first of four promised Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Saturday.

Germany’s leader said in an interview there was agreement that weapons supplied by the West would not be used to attack Russian territory.

“There is a consensus on this point,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the weekly Bild am Sonntag.

Kyiv, while expressing gratitude for the pledged weapons, wants more, including fighter jets.

Officials in Kyiv said that the bodies of the two Britons killed while trying to help people evacuate from the eastern war zone had been recovered in a prisoner swap.

Chris Parry, 28, and Andrew Bagshaw, 47, were undertaking voluntary work in Soledar, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, when their vehicle was reportedly hit by a shell.