Politic?: The Battle for Bakhmut

"Units of the private military company Wagner have practically surrounded Bakhmut."
"Only one route [out] is left."
"The pincers are closing."
"I appeal to the President of Ukraine. ... If earlier the professional Ukrainian army fought with us, today we see more and more old people and children. They are fighting, but their life in Bakhmut is short -- a day, two. Give them the opportunity to leave the city."
Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader, Wagner Mercenaries

"[The situation is] critical [with fighting going on] around the clock."
"They take no account of their losses in trying to take the city by assault. The task of our forces in Bakhmut is to inflict as many losses on the enemy as possible. Every metre of Ukrainian land costs hundreds of lives to the enemy."
"There are many more Russians here than we have ammunition to destroy them."
Volodymyr Nazarenko, deputy commander, National Guard of Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers have for months been trying to fend off Russian assaults on Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

Russian troops and their mercenaries continue to pour artillery toward the last access roads leading to the besieged city of Bakhmut. Moscow is approaching ever closer to its first major victory in a six-month period that saw it reeling under a succession of Ukrainian assaults in a counteroffensive that has pushed Russian troops back to the border and a number of towns and cities evacuated by the Russian military forces, left in ruins, the remnants of their populations welcoming the arrival of the Ukrainian troops in liberation mode.

Speaking via video, the head of Russia's Wagner group, the private army comprised of mercenaries augmented more recently with convicted criminals taking the Wagner offer to serve on the front in Ukraine for their prison sentences to be written off. The untrained convicts have been sent to their deaths essentially, used as cannon fodder. Their deaths haven't seemed to bother the Wagner leader one iota. But he jeers at Ukraine, warning that if Ukrainian fighters are not removed from the encircled city this will be their fate, too.

Intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut in an apparent effort to block Ukrainian forces' access in and out of the city is ongoing. In the close-by town of Khromove a bridge was damaged by Russian tank shelling. Ukrainian soldiers working to repair damaged roads - more troops heading toward the frontline, signalling that Ukraine has no intentions just yet of giving up Bakhmut.

Ukrainian troops were digging new trenches for defensive positions, to the west. Presumably in preparation for an anticipated spring counteroffensive. A video clip showing Wagner fighters released by Russia's RIA state news agency, has the fighters walking through a damaged industrial factory with one of the fighters overheard to say that Ukraine is destroying infrastructure in settlements near Bakhmut in prevention of the Russian encirclement.

On Friday the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, Eleksandr Syrskyi visited Bakhmut for briefings with local commanders on how best to increase the defence capacity of frontline forces. Bakhmut's pre-war population of 70,000 has been reduced to a few thousand who decided to remain. The city's capture would represent a prize after a costly winter offensive for Russia following the calling up of hundreds of thousands of reservists.

A group of men in combat gear, without their helmets, sit and stand around a park bench looking exhausted.

A group of Ukrainian servicemen rest after leaving Bakhmut on Friday.(AP Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka)

According to Russia, Bakhmut's capture would represent a stepping stone to the capture of the surrounding industrialized Donbas region. The leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prifozhin, called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to order a retreat from Bakhmut if he wanted to save the lives of his embattled soldiers. In the video three captured Ukrainians -- a grey-bearded older man and two boys -- were asking to be permitted to return home.

Robert Brovdi, commander of a Ukrainian drone unit active in Bakhmut revealed in a video posted on social media that his unit was ordered to withdraw immediately by the military. He had been fighting in Bakhmut for 110 days. In the past several days alarm has arisen in Russia realizing its own potential vulnerability following a report out of Moscow that a number of drones had attacked targets deep within Russian territory. Moscow also reported a described armed cross-border raid.

Russia's Security Council was ordered by President Putin to step up "anti-terrorism measures". Ukrainians offering a measure of the violence that Moscow has ordered to take place in Ukraine, back to Russia is terrorism, whereas Russia's invasion is a noble enterprise to free Ukrainians from the tyranny of 'fascism'. A delusional complete reversal of reality.