Volodymyr Zelensky made the statement in his latest video address to the nation on Sunday night, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The Ukrainian president said: “I held a meeting of the staff today. The situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was examined in great detail. The Bakhmut direction is key.”
He added: “We keep the city, although the occupiers are doing everything so that not a single undamaged wall remains there.”
Bakhmut, located in the eastern Donetsk region, is currently among the most heavily attacked areas of Ukraine, the PAP news agency reported.
According to the Institute for the Study of the War, a US think tank, “Ukrainian and Russian sources reported ongoing fighting in the outskirts of Bakhmut and to the northeast and south of the city.”
The ISW made the statement in its latest report on the war in Ukraine, published on Sunday night.
The US experts added: “Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces dislodged Russian forces from long-held positions near Bakhmut.”
Positional fighting continues in Luhansk province
In other battlefront developments, Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that positional fighting continued along the Svatove-Kremmina line, in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, the ISW said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence “claimed that Russian forces captured Yakovlivka, Donetsk Oblast, northeast of Soledar,” the Washington-based think tank added.
It cited a Ukrainian official as saying that Russian forces were “redeploying units from the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast” in southern Ukraine.
The official said it was “too early to tell” whether Russian troops were retreating, the ISW reported. The think tank added that Russian and Ukrainian forces “continued routine artillery and rocket strikes across the Dnipro River.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s General Staff said that Ukrainian forces struck two Russian force concentrations and two ammunition depots in the southeastern Zaporizhia region on December 16, injuring 150 personnel and destroying 10 pieces of equipment, the US experts noted.
The ISW quoted Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov as saying that Russian forces were placing concrete anti-tank defences, the so-called "dragon’s teeth," in the strategically important southern city.
Meanwhile, “Russian forces and occupation authorities continue to struggle to address a severe shortage of medical personnel and supplies,” according to the ISW.
Ukraine attempts to kill top Russian general: reports
Ukrainian forces shelled a Russian command-and-control post in the eastern city of Izyum, targeting Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov, but the general managed to leave the facility before the attack, the PAP news agency reported, citing Oleksii Arestovych, an advisor to Zelensky.
According to a report by The New York Times, the United States tried to stop Ukraine from killing Gen. Valery Gerasimov amid concerns that this would prompt an escalation of the war.
The NYT reported on its website on Saturday: “American officials found out that Gen. Valery Gerasimov was planning a trip to the front lines, but withheld the information from the Ukrainians, worried that an attempt on his life could lead to a war between the United States and Russia.”
The US newspaper said: “The Ukrainians learned of the trip anyway. After an internal debate, Washington took the extraordinary step of asking Ukraine to call off an attack — only to be told that the Ukrainians had already launched it. Dozens of Russian soldiers were said to have been killed. General Gerasimov wasn’t one of them.”
Putin aiming to drag Belarus into land operations against Ukraine
Meanwhile, the commander of Ukraine’s United Forces, Gen. Serhiy Nayev, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s planned meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Monday would be designed to drag Minsk further into the war on Ukraine, including land operations, the PAP news agency reported.
Nayev said in a video posted on Facebook on Sunday: "In our opinion, during this meeting, the issues of further aggression against Ukraine and the wider involvement of the armed forces of Belarus in the operation against Ukraine, particularly land operations, will be discussed," as quoted by Ukraine’s espreso.tv website.
The ISW echoed Nayev’s assessment that Putin’s "meeting with the Russian command" on Saturday, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu’s "purported frontline visit," and "the Putin-Lukashenko meeting suggest a new phase in the presentation, planning, and conduct of the war and may presage renewed offensive operations against Ukraine in the coming months.”
Monday is day 299 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, understandingwar.org, president.gov.ua, nytimes.com, global.espreso.tv