Russian Troops Pushed Out of Bakhmut Positions: Ukrainian Commander

A Ukrainian commander has said that his soldiers have pushed back Russian troops in the last few days in Bakhmut as the battle for the Donetsk town continues ahead of an imminent Kyiv counteroffensive.

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that Kyiv's troops had "repelled numerous assaults" in the direction of Lyman and that "the enemy's attempts to capture our positions were unsuccessful."

"The enemy suffered losses, we captured 10 enemy soldiers," he said, according to a translation of comments cited by Ukraine's military media center.

Syrskyi described how despite high Russian losses, new groups of fighters from the Wagner Group, other private military companies and paratroopers were rushing into battle, although, "the enemy fails to take control of the city."

"The situation is quite complicated," he added, "at the same time, in some parts of the city, the enemy faced counterattacks from our units and left some positions." Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

Syrskyi's comments come amid an assessment by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank that Russian troops were still making gains in some parts of the city, but their advances had slowed.

Meanwhile, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that 20,000 Russian troops fighting in Ukraine—half of them Wagner Group fighters—had been killed since December. Ukraine has also suffered high losses.

Most of the troops were killed in brutal trench warfare for the city which Russia has repeatedly claimed it was on the brink of capturing.

Moscow's attempt at a "winter offensive in the Donbas largely through Bakhmut has failed," Kirby said, likening Russian casualties around the town to those seen in some of the most intense fighting of World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge, a major German offensive towards the end of the war.

Kyiv is widely expected soon to launch a counter-offensive to retake territory in the east and south of the country with the stakes for both sides high.

Success for Kyiv is expected to bolster the justification for continued Western support for Kyiv. It could also widen the gap between Russia's ability to wage war and Ukraine's to defend itself and take back occupied lands, Leon Hartwell, senior associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics' foreign policy think tank, told Newsweek.

"Russia has lost 8,000 to 16,000 weapons systems such as tanks, artillery systems and naval ships," he said. "So far, Western sanctions have proven to be fairly effective in slowing down Russia's ability to replace those military systems."

"If Russia incurs further substantial losses during the spring offensive, it may accelerate the trend to deploy older generations of military systems to the Ukrainian battlefield and MacGyvering existing military systems with inferior parts."

Correction 5/11/23, 6:10 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct Leon Hartwell's job title from visiting fellow to senior associate at LSE IDEAS.