Ukraine war in Newsblog | Ukrainian military: This is how we hold Bakhmut

Day 430 since the beginning of the war: Wagner boss Prigozchin complains of a lack of ammunition. President Zelenskyy accuses Russian soldiers. All information in the blog.

1.40 a.m.: In the battle for Bakhmut, the Russian attackers were unable to cut off the Ukrainian supply routes to the badly damaged city, according to information from Kiev. “The Russians have been talking for several weeks about conquering the ‘Road of Life’ and constantly controlling fire over it. In fact, everything is different,” spokesman for Army Group East of the Ukrainian armed forces, Serhiy Cherevatyy, told the zn.ua Internet portal on Saturday. Although the connecting road from Bakhmut to Chasiv Yar was fought over, the Russians were unable to interrupt the defenders’ logistics. The information could not be verified independently.

The supply of provisions, weapons and ammunition is secured, explained Tscherevatyj. On the one hand, the Ukrainian forces maintained their positions along the road, on the other hand, engineers had already laid new routes to Bakhmut. “All of this makes it possible to keep Bachmut alive,” he said. In its situation report, the Ukrainian general staff also spoke of “unsuccessful attempts” by the Russian attackers to gain ground in the area.

1:34 am: A day after a deadly rocket attack on Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed not only the Russian leadership but also soldiers for war crimes. “Not just the commanders, but all of you, you are all terrorists and murderers and you all have to be punished,” said the 45-year-old on Saturday evening in his daily video address. Anyone who steers and fires rockets, who maintains planes and ships for terror, is complicit in the deaths of the war, he said.

10:32 p.m: According to the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, two civilians have died after a Ukrainian attack on a village in the region. “According to preliminary information, one apartment building was completely destroyed, two other houses were partially destroyed,” writes Governor Alexander Bogomaz on Telegram. The Bryansk region borders Ukraine to the south. Ukraine has not yet commented on the attack.

1:57 p.m.: The head of the Russian Wagner mercenary unit, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has threatened to withdraw his troops from the embattled city of Bakhmut in Ukraine because of the high losses caused by a lack of supplies. “Every day we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home,” Prigozhin said in an interview with Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov published on Saturday. Losses were five times higher than necessary because of the lack of artillery ammunition, he complained.

He wrote a letter to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to get supplies as soon as possible. “If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced – in order not to run like cowardly rats afterwards – either to withdraw in an organized manner or to die,” said the 61-year-old. He would probably be forced to withdraw some of his troops, but that would mean that the front would collapse elsewhere, he warned.

Prigozhin can afford the criticism because he is considered a confidante of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he fed when he was an official in St. Petersburg. Therefore he is also called “Putin’s cook”. According to research by independent journalists, Prigozhin made good money from the war in Ukraine through contracts with the Ministry of Defense in Moscow. The media portal “Moschem objasnit” recently reported that Prigozhin’s companies raked in a record sum of 4.7 billion rubles (about 52 million euros) through these contracts in 2022.

1:46 p.m.: The agreement reached between the EU Commission and several Eastern European countries on grain imports from Ukraine has met with approval in the country. Blocking Ukrainian imports would not only harm Ukraine but also cause great suffering to the Middle East and Africa, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Stockholm on Saturday.