Bakhmut has been a major target of the Russian military in its slow advance into the Donetsk region, one of the territories the Kremlin claims it has annexed after what Kyiv and the West say were sham referendums in September. Kiev’s military says the region is the site of some of the heaviest fighting with Russian forces, and Deputy Mayor Oleksandr Marchenko told Reuters that Russian troops were “trying to break into the city from multiple directions.” Reuters could not independently confirm its account of the situation on the battlefield. “Every day it becomes more and more difficult to survive in this city,” Marchenko said from inside an empty government building as mortar fire raged nearby. He said more than 120 civilians have been killed in Bahamut since Russia invaded on February 24. “There are districts where we do not know the exact number of people killed because there is active fighting there or the settlements are temporarily occupied (by Russian forces),” he added. Ukrainian troops are “firmly holding the front line”, Marchenko said, while describing a worsening humanitarian situation facing the city, where the population has fallen from a pre-war level of around 80,000 to 12,000 today. They have already been without electricity, gas and running water for almost two months. Marchenko said local citizens still dared to shop, collect humanitarian aid or collect water despite being told to evacuate. He added that winter will be more difficult for the elderly and the disabled. “We maintain and hope that the armed forces of Ukraine will be able to push the enemy further away from the city,” he said. Reporting by Joseph Campbell in Bakhmut Writing by Dan Peleschuk in Kyiv Editing by Helen Popper Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
