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Ukraine update: Situation at Bakhmut critical as bridge is blown and some troops withdraw [1]
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Date: 2023-03-03
Some of the faces that have become familiar from videos inside the city are among those who have made it out, as Ukrainian forces prepare the new line of battle. They’re not going in the direction they wanted, but it’s hard to say that these are not men who have given everything they possibly can.
x Glory to our Defenders!
📹- serega13053 / TikTok pic.twitter.com/7BOMWIP2Px — Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) March 2, 2023
Frequently seen Ukrainian Army commander “Magyar” has also reportedly been evacuated from the city. Local unit commander Olga Bigar, call sign "Witch,” hasn’t been on video since Feb. 26, but she may have already been out of the area at that time. Videos on Thursday also showed Ukrainian forces evacuating at least a few of the civilians who had remained in Bakhmut until the bitter end.
Early morning assumptions that Ukraine had withdrawn all forces appear to be in error. While initial reports suggested that Ukraine had left the core of the city for Russia to stroll in, later reports indicate continued fighting, and that there are still Ukrainian forces, and even armor, within Bakhmut. If Bakhmut still holds, it is doing so by its fingernails. However, the city has not been surrendered.
Bakhmut. Open image in another tab for a larger view.
This map represents the best estimate of where things stood on Friday morning. A renewed Russian attack in the south had reportedly brought fighting back to the area of Ivaniske, but Ukraine reportedly repulsed that attack. There still seems to be a clear space around the western end of “the road of life” at Chasiv Yar. Russian forces have pressed further into the city on the north and east, and also reportedly moved down the western side of a reservoir between Yahidne and Khromove. Most of the video seen from Bakhmut over the last few weeks originated from the area at the core of the city, east of the rail line—roughly where the Bakhmut tag is sitting on the map—but it’s not clear where remaining Ukrainian forces are situated now.
The bridge through Khromove is most definitely out. However, like most of the rivers around Bakhmut, the stream it crosses isn’t exactly a raging torrent. The result is more of a speed bump than an insurmountable obstacle.
x 📷A road bridge in Khromove settlement, west #Bakhmut, was destroyed. That leaves a road through the fields and Ivanivske the only remaining option.#UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/T4V5UQ7FAP — MilitaryLand.net (@Militarylandnet) March 3, 2023
Certainly trucks could come right up to the other end of that fallen bridge and troops could be evacuated. Whether it’s possible to get a vehicle across it is a different issue. Ukraine has been bringing down bridges and breeching dams on the small reservoirs around Bakhmut over the last week, with the obvious intention of slowing Russia’s progress. There is still a reservoir south of this downed bridge that might be breeched if Ukraine wants to make things as difficult as possible.
Within the city, it appears that a pair of street bridges into the eastern half of Bakhmut were already down, and now Ukraine has taken out the rail bridge.
x Ukrainian forces blew up the railway bridge over the Bakhmutovka river in eastern Bakhmut (48.601162247240744, 38.00609977824568) pic.twitter.com/zJV4PO7dJL — NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) March 3, 2023
Reuters reports that Ukrainian forces have dug a new series of trenches, forming defensive positions to protect access to the Khromove. The bridge may be down, but it seems that Ukraine isn’t ready to give up the road. This makes it seem that there’s a definite plan to keep extracting a cost from Russia as it attempts to advance into the city. Or maybe those remaining troops are turning the ruined hulk of Bakhmut into a series of booby traps.
Ukrainian soldier Kyianyn, who issued a message from central Bakhmut three days ago, still reports as if the fighting today is just an extension of the fighting that has been going on for weeks. But he’s no longer speaking from inside the city.
x Update on Bakhmut, 3 March - Kyianyn.
Important to remember Kyianyn is not directly in Bakhmut at the moment. pic.twitter.com/YwRa6luGkh — Dmitri (@wartranslated) March 3, 2023
What we know for sure is that the bridge is down, some forces have come out, some armor has been relocated away from the city, and some level of Ukrainian resistance remains in Bakhmut.
Overnight, the Ukrainian Telegram Channel DeepState reported that Russian forces had moved south of Dubovo-Vasylivka and had taken the road through Khromove under fire control. However, they also reported that Ukrainian troops had halted Russia’s advance toward Ivanivske and areas along the highway to the south. And reported continued fighting block by block in the city, including in some familiar areas near the winery and meat-packing plant in the eastern part of the city. So the contested area in the city may be larger than many sources are reporting.
Meanwhile, Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin was filmed in Paraskoiivka, just north of Bakhmut, sanctimoniously insisting that Ukraine withdraw its forces from Bakhmut to keep them from being killed by his men. His video is deliberately not included here.
Instead, here’s what we can only hope some of those who have been long stationed at Bakhmut are allowed to do before they return to the front anywhere else.
x This is what we're fighting for.
📹: user3832631861044/TikTok pic.twitter.com/P3vtvnElVY — Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) March 2, 2023
Ukraine reportedly shot down a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber on Friday morning. This makes 19 of the planes Russia has lost since the invasion began, so it doesn’t take an item off the list of Russian Army Equipment Not Yet Destroyed In Ukraine.
The interesting thing about this particular shoot down is the where, since the plane apparently took a missile hit near the occupied down of Yenakiieve in Donetsk Oblast. That’s better than 20 km from the nearest area of Ukrainian military control. Exactly what took down the jet isn’t clear, but it may have been a missile fired from a Ukrainian pilot operating near the line of conflict. It’s also a good signal that there is nowhere in Ukraine that Russian pilots can fly with impunity.
Russia has confirmed the loss of 71 combat aircraft since the invasion began. The updated Su-34M is regarded as Russia’s most advanced plane and only entered service in the last year. It’s unclear how many of the Su-34s shot down in Ukraine were of this upgraded type.
Canadian volunteer DeFacto reporting on her humanitarian work in Ukraine. The area she’s describing is along the road between Lyman and Kreminna.
x Adventures of Defacto in a war zone. Thank you @Harri_Est for waking up and helping, even though I'm an idiot.
Today I'm coming home with food but we went to #Zarichne and made a difference.
TY so much donors.🫂
Tomorrow I'll head out again with help.#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/9FBlpXNuR9 — Defacto (@DefactoHumanity) March 3, 2023
It’s been a month now since Russia launched it’s “big offensive” at Kreminna. If you haven’t seen a lot of reporting on it, that’s because there hasn’t been a lot to report. Just as Ukraine found going the other way, the mud has restricted Russia to a few possible routes, and those routes are heavily contested. So fighting right now is still going on in almost exactly the same locations where it was when the offensive began.
Russia has, in fact, had so little success at Kreminna, that they reportedly took forces away from that location and sent them to somewhere they thought was more promising. I’m not making this up. They sent those forces to Vuhledar.
Let’s check in and see, in formal terms, What Vuhledar Doing? Vuhledar doing this.
x You don’t hear much talk about it but Russia recently suffered one of its worst defeats during an attempted armored attack on Vuhledar. pic.twitter.com/EPjtoVvSvB — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 2, 2023
That poster? It’s actually a week out of date. Since then, Russia has failed in at least two more advances at Vuhledar from the east. These later assaults have been mostly infantry, because Russia is apparently convinced that, having failed to cross the flat, empty, heavily-mined field in armor, it will be better on foot. Still, recent failures have added this to the total.
x 🔥 Ukrainian Warriors destroyed a rare russian 2S7 Pion in the area of Vuhledar.
According to available information, in 2022, the russian army was armed with only 40 such mortars.
Beautiful 😍🤩💥#RussiaIsLosing #Donbas #Vuhledar #RussiaUkraineWar #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/UwrTCVgUTg — ✙ Albina Fella ✙ 🇺🇦🇬🇧🇫🇷🇩🇪🇵🇱🇺🇸🇫🇮🇸🇪 (@albafella1) March 2, 2023
Sorry. Ukraine has already destroyed six more of these, so that’s also not an item for the BINGO card. If you missed The New York Times article on Vuhledar, it’s definitely worth a read. Though presenting what’s happening there as a “tank battle” really obscures that it’s more often tanks vs mines than tanks vs tanks.
More evidence that the explosions that took place at the Russian military base in Yelsk, across the Sea of Azov from Mariupol, were more than just a “training exercise.”
x Six fighter-bombers have disappeared at Russian airfield in the city of Yeysk after the fire and a supposed UAV attack on 28 February.
Source: Russian service Radio Liberty, posting pictures from
https://t.co/LdS3svC7hw taken on 2 March pic.twitter.com/SGDorPURdL — Ukrainian News24 (@UkrainianNews24) March 3, 2023
Were planes destroyed, or did Russia decide to relocate assets after discovering that 150 km from the front lines is too close? That’s not known.
Daily Kos is lucky enough to count KyivGuy among the members of the community, and his answers to questions about everyday life in Ukraine away from the front lines have been a terrific addition.
Here’s another little slice of life from Kyiv: Yaroslava Antipina lives in Kyiv with her son. Though she left the city to join her mother in the weeks after the invasion began, she soon returned to her home in Kyiv and has become famous for her daily “war coffee” diary in which she visits places around Ukraine, just looking for a cup of coffee (black, no sugar), and to see how things are going around the city. She frequently records a brief part of these strolls through Kyiv, and the one minute videos act as nice moments of meditation on normal life interrupted. For the most part in these videos, nothing happens. Just walking. Just people going about their business. And that’s exactly what you want to see.
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