As in 1916 in eastern France, the Battle of Bakhmout was extremely violent and deadly. Its outcome has become a symbolic question as the first anniversary of the start of the war, February 24, 2022, approaches.
Moscow wants to secure its first significant victory after months of setbacks, but kyiv is determined to hold on. And as both sides entrench themselves, the human cost, to troops and civilians alike, has overshadowed the strategic importance of controlling this crumbling former industrial city in its eastern, northern and southern quarters.
Volodymyr Zelensky reported on Tuesday February 13 an “extremely difficult” situation in the east facing Russian troops, who have been gaining ground in recent weeks, particularly near Bakhmout.
“The situation on the front line, especially in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, remains extremely difficult. It is literally a battle for every meter of Ukrainian land,” the Ukrainian president said during his evening video address.
According to British intelligence services, while the Russian advance has been halted, the pressure remains. On Sunday February 12, the Russian paramilitary group Wagner claimed responsibility for taking Krasna Hora, a few kilometers north of Bakhmout. What justify the repeated calls of Volodymyr Zelensky to receive more weapons from Western countries.
The United States announced on Tuesday that it had awarded an arms contract for more than half a billion dollars to produce 155mm shells for delivery to Ukraine. The orders, placed at the end of January by the Pentagon for the benefit of Northrop Grumman and Global military products, total 552 million dollars. The first deliveries are expected in March 2023.
Washington’s announcement comes at a time when fears are growing about a depletion of arms stocks in Western countries and particularly the United States, which for the past year has been increasing withdrawals from the existing stocks of its army to help that of Kiev to fight the Russian invasion. This order is based on a different approach: the armaments delivered to Ukraine are produced directly for them, on an American budget.
In eastern Ukraine, the Russian and Ukrainian armies can fire thousands of shells a day, up to 20,000 daily for the Russians, an American official estimated in November 2022.
The members of NATO continue this Wednesday in Brussels their discussions to accelerate their deliveries of armaments and ammunition to Ukraine, which insists on also receiving combat planes in order to better resist the Russian invasion.
“The priority, the urgency, is to provide the Ukrainians with the armaments that have been promised to them to maintain their ability to defend themselves”, insisted Tuesday Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the Alliance, before the start of this meeting of two days of the “Ramstein group”.
All decisions on arms shipments to Ukraine are taken within this body constituted and chaired by the United States, in which some fifty countries participate, and which usually holds its meetings at the American base in Ramstein in Germany. Started on Tuesday, the meeting in Brussels continues this Wednesday. “Tomorrow’s program is just as busy. We will devote more time to tanks,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Facebook on Tuesday evening.
The authorities of the city of Baikonur, located in Kazakhstan but under Russian jurisdiction, offered financial compensation to Russian citizens mobilized and volunteers to go and fight in Ukraine, one year after the start of the war.
This city of some 75,000 inhabitants, lost in the steppes of Kazakhstan, and its eponymous cosmodrome, are rented by Russia until 2050. It is from here that the famous Soyuz rockets are sent into space in particular, and thousands of Russian nationals work there.
According to a statement published on the city hall’s website on Tuesday, the “social support measures” decided by the authorities “include payments for mobilized Russian citizens and those who have voluntarily expressed the desire to participate in the special military operation”, the euphemism used by Moscow to describe its invasion of Ukraine. These bonuses are intended “exclusively for citizens of the Russian Federation” and must be paid within twenty days of the request, it is specified.
Earlier, the Baikonur prosecutor’s office had indicated that volunteers wishing to join the Russian army to fight in Ukraine will receive an amount of 260,000 rubles, or approximately 3300 euros. In Russia, the minimum compensation paid by Moscow to volunteers is 195,000 rubles (about 2,500 euros).
Russia on Tuesday denied any “plan to destabilize Moldova”, Moldovan President Maïa Sandu having accused Moscow the day before of preparing “violent attacks” in her country, a pro-Western neighbor of Ukraine. The assertions of the Moldovan leader “are absolutely unfounded and without proof”, denounced the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release. He also accuses Ukraine of being the source of this “disinformation” to fuel tensions between Moscow and Chisinau.
The United States on Tuesday reaffirmed its support for Moldova, a former Soviet republic located at the gates of Ukraine. “We are deeply concerned by reports of a plot by Russia to destabilize the democratically elected government of Moldova,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. He further insisted that Washington was working with Moldovan authorities to “counter Russia’s long-term efforts to undermine the country’s democratic institutions.”
Moldova also temporarily closed its airspace on Tuesday due to a “flying object resembling a weather balloon”, and Romania, a member of NATO, took off fighters. Moldova announced this decision at midday, which led to the cessation of all flights. The local media had then mentioned “security reasons” without further details. In a press release published in the evening, the Civil Aviation Directorate explained “having received a report that a small unidentified object had been detected”.
A British national has died in Ukraine, the Foreign Office announced on Tuesday, bringing the number of Britons who have died in the country to eight since the Russian invasion nearly a year ago. “We are supporting the family of a British national who died in Ukraine and are in contact with local authorities,” a UK Foreign Office spokesman said.
Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, a number of Britons have traveled to Ukraine to fight alongside Ukrainian soldiers or take part in humanitarian operations. Among them were Christopher Parry and Andrew Bagshaw, killed while attempting a humanitarian evacuation from the town of Soledar, the scene of intense clashes in early January and largely destroyed in shelling. Their bodies were recovered as part of a prisoner exchange between kyiv and Moscow, according to Ukrainian authorities.
