Ukrainian soldiers and civilians fled the “hell on earth” that became Bakhmut on Saturday as Russian forces got here close to taking up a devastated eastern city seen as the key to Moscow’s eastern assault.
A minimum of one woman was killed and two men were seriously injured in Russian airstrikes trying to cross a makeshift bridge from Bakhmut, the center of intense fighting in Donbass in eastern Ukraine for months.
In the last two days, two bridges in the city have been demolished, including a span connecting the city’s last primary supply route with Khasiv Yar, UK Ministry of Defence he said in an interview on Saturday.
According to the report, the city was “under increasing pressure” with the forces of the Russian army and the Wagner Group approaching the suburbs, allowing Ukrainian forces to attack from three sides.
Individually, the head of Wagner’s mercenary unit – which infamously recruited convicts from Russian prisons to join their forces in exchange for freedom – said Bakhmut was “virtually surrounded”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and founding father of a mercenary group, urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut in a video recorded on a rooftop 4 miles north of the city.
“Just one route [out of the city] left,” Prigozhin said in a video posted on Telegram. “The parts are closing.”
After Prigozhin’s speech, the camera turned to the three captured Ukrainians, two boys and an elderly bearded man, who then ask to return home.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said a Ukrainian retreat from Bakhmut appears imminent.
Ukrainian troops can “perform a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut” if deemed essential by the military, the group wrote in estimate of the Russian offensive.
Russian forces have been trying to take Bakhmut since May 2022 and have suffered “devastating losses in the process,” the think tank added.
Losing the city to enemy forces would create supply problems for Ukraine, but its strategic value is overshadowed by the potential symbolic significance of what could be Russia’s first victory in months after a bloody stalemate in the region all winter.
The death toll has also increased in Ukraine, where no less than 8,006 civilians have been killed and 13,287 injured since Russia invaded a yr ago, the UN Human Rights Office said on Saturday, adding that the real numbers are likely higher. Estimates of the deaths of soldiers vary widely, but Western intelligence sources estimate that all sides suffered roughly 150,000 casualties on the battlefield.
In Bakhmut, a police group known as the “Dark Angels” is removing the dead while their counterparts, the “White Angels”, are attempting to evacuate the remaining children and elderly from the ravaged city, the Observer reports.
Oleksandra Hacrylko, a police major in the White Angels, said the group’s seek for at-risk children has led to rumors that authorities are taking children away from parents who refuse to leave.
“There are cases where individuals are hiding children because they’ve heard rumors that the police will take their children by force,” she said, emphasizing that the rumors weren’t true and that they’d only evacuate children with their parents’ consent.
![Wounded Ukrainian soldier.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000007611506.jpg?w=1024)
Moscow’s forces on Saturday continued airstrikes in other regions.
Zelensky published a photograph of a destroyed apartment constructing in Zaporizhia, the region where the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is positioned.
A minimum of 11 people died in the strike The Telegraph reported.
Individually, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was ridiculed during a speech on Moscow’s energy policy when he stated that a war had been “began” against his country.
“The war we’re trying to stop, which was launched against us with…,” Lavrov said at the G20 summit in Recent Delhi, India, before being interrupted by fun.
“Ukrainians obviously influenced Russia’s politics, including energy policy,” Lavrov continued, before being stopped by one other laugh and an audience member shouting “Come on.”