Russia is sticking to its goal of controlling Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine

The day before, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the army to send reinforcements to this practically destroyed city, denying speculation regarding the withdrawal of his forces from it, despite the recent advances of Russian forces and the threat of besieging it. The Ukrainians intend to resist the depletion of forces in preparation for a counter-attack that they will launch with the heavy weapons and modern armor that the Westerners promised Kiev.

And Poland announced on Tuesday that it will deliver to Ukraine, starting this week, ten German-made Leopard 2 tanks, which Ukrainian soldiers have received training in using.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday during a meeting of military officials that was televised that Bakhmut constitutes “an important defense center for Ukrainian forces in the Donbass region. Control of it will allow additional attacks in the depth of the lines of defense of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Experts and observers question Bakhmut’s strategic importance, but the city has gained symbolic and tactical importance, with the Russians facing difficulties in controlling it during more than seven months of fighting since August.

The Battle of Bakhmut is the longest and the deadliest since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

Moscow needs a victory

Moscow is looking for a victory, albeit symbolic, following the major setbacks it suffered last fall, and hopes that the fall of the city will open the way for it to control the part outside its control of the industrial Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.

Massive devastation was inflicted on Bakhmut, in which barely four thousand people remained, compared to 70 thousand before the invasion.

After progress they have made recently, it seems that the Russians control the entrances to the city from the north, south and east, which raises the fear of besieging it.

The Russian armed Wagner Group is leading this attack with massive losses, as its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is in the combat zone, admits.

However, the latter is engaged in an open conflict with the Russian military leadership, which he accuses of not delivering enough ammunition to his men engaged in fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut. Prigozhin considers that the Russian lines will collapse if his men withdraw.

On Tuesday, he mocked the Minister of Defense, saying that he “did not meet him” on the battlefield, while the Ministry of Defense confirmed on Saturday, without going into details, that Shoigu had visited the combat zone. On Sunday, the minister visited Mariupol, which is more than a hundred kilometers from the front.

On the Ukrainian side, the battle has created a new hero, following a video circulated widely on the Internet showing what appeared to be the extrajudicial execution of a captured Russian soldier with a Kalashnikov rifle following he shouted “Glory to Ukraine!”

The Ukrainian army introduced the man on Tuesday as “the soldier in the 30th Mechanized Brigade, Timofey Mikolayovich Shadura,” explaining that the soldier had gone missing in the vicinity of Bakhmut on the third of February.

He added that “revenge for our hero will be inevitable”.

New Ukrainian champion

AFP has not been able to independently verify the source of the footage nor whether, as Ukrainian officials assert, it shows the execution of a prisoner, which might constitute a war crime.

This video was widely spread on social media on Monday, while many publications, pictures and drawings praised this soldier and his courage and patriotism.

On Monday, Zelensky promised to “find the killers” and called on Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to open an investigation led by the International Criminal Court.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to arrive in Kiev on his third visit to Ukraine since the outbreak of the war, to discuss, in particular, the continued implementation of the Ukrainian grain export agreement, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

In Russia, the repression of critics of the invasion of Ukraine and of President Vladimir Putin continues. On Tuesday, a Moscow court sentenced the founder of an opposition channel on Telegram to nearly nine years in prison for publishing “false” information regarding the army, according to the Russian News Agency.

For its part, Belarus, an ally of Moscow, announced that it had arrested more than 20 people suspected of being linked to the alleged sabotage of a Russian military plane last month at an airstrip near Minsk.

At the end of February, the Belarusian opposition in exile confirmed that a Russian plane had been destroyed at an airstrip near Minsk, in what it described as “the most successful act of sabotage” since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Media close to the opposition indicated that the targeted A-50 aircraft was intended for reconnaissance and command purposes.

The Kremlin declined to comment, but Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that an A-50 of the Russian military had been targeted, stressing that the plane was not “severely damaged”. He pointed out that the main suspect is a Russian-Ukrainian man working for Kiev’s intelligence service.