The six-month battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been the longest and bloodiest fight of the war so far.
Little known outside Ukraine before the Russian invasion, Bakhmut has become a symbol of the country’s fortitude and perseverance in the face of the Kremlin's onslaught.
When a separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in April 2014, weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, Russia-backed separatists won control of the city but lost it a few months later.Russian troops first attempted to recapture Bakhmut in early August but were pushed back.
Soldiers from Russia’s private Wagner Group contractor have spearheaded the offensive, marching on “the corpses of their own troops” as Ukrainian officials put it. By the end of February, the Russians approached the only highway leading out of the city and targeted it with artillery, forcing Ukrainian defenders to rely increasingly on country roads, which are hard to use before the ground dries.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the seizure of Bakhmut would allow Russia to press its offensive deeper into the region. “It has achieved its aim as effectively being the anvil on which so many Russian lives have been broken,” Lord Richard Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff of the British armed forces, said on Sky News.
While Ukrainian and Western officials pointed out that Russian combat losses were much higher than Ukrainian, some observers argued that the defense of Bakhmut was distracting Ukrainian resources that could be used in a planned counteroffensive later in the spring.
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Ukraine sending more troops into Bakhmut in attempt to break Russian siege - National | Globalnews.caWestern strategists say the ruined city has limited value, and Russia's assault may be motivated by a need to give President Vladimir Putin a symbolic victory.
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