Russia’s Bakhmut assault is losing steam, Ukraine says

The Russian campaign has yielded few gains, and Ukraine, which had looked likely to pull out of the small eastern city of Bakhmut.

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.

The remarks by Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia’s onslaught through a brutal winter.

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.

“Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk,” he said, listing Ukrainian counteroffensives last year that proved turning points in the war, recapturing swathes of land.

Syrskyi was one of the top commanders behind Ukraine’s strategy last year that repelled Russia’s assault on Kyiv and rolled back Moscow’s forces through the second half of 2022.

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.

The Russian campaign has yielded few gains, and Ukraine, which had looked likely to pull out of the small eastern city of Bakhmut, decided this month to keep its troops there, denying Moscow its first victory since last August.

Kyiv has long said it plans a major counteroffensive at some point this year, using newly supplied Western arms. Several of its most successful offensives last year followed quickly after Russia had exhausted its forces in huge battles in the east.