Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting in the streets of Bakhmut but Russia does not control the eastern city, its deputy mayor has said. Oleksandr Marchenko also told the BBC the remaining 4,000 civilians are living in shelters without access to gas, electricity or water.
Mr Marchenko said “not a single building” had remained untouched and that the city is “almost de-stroyed”. Bakhmut has seen months of fighting, as Russia tries to take charge.
“There is fighting near the city and there are also street fights,” Mr Marchenko said. Taking the city would be a rare battlefield success in recent months for Russia. But despite that, the city’s strategic value has been questioned.
Thousands of Russian troops have died trying to take Bakhmut, which had a pre-war population of around 75,000. Ukrainian commanders estimate that Russia has lost seven times as many soldiers as they have. On Saturday, UK military intelligence said Russian advances in the northern suburbs had left the Ukraine-held sections vulnerable to Russian attacks on three sides.
Mr Marchenko accused the Russians of having “no goal” to save the city and that it wanted to commit “genocide of the Ukrainian people”. “Cur-rently there is no communication in the city so the city is cut out, the bridges are destroyed and the tactics the Russians are using is the tactic of parched land,” Mr Marchenko told the Today programme.—INP
