Here mate. A link to your article in full. We are allowed to gift articles every month. Click on it and work your posting magic with no paywall. :-D You're much better at it than I am.
We've seen this movie before. The unmotivated collapsing before the onslaught of the motivated. The S. Vietnamese Army collapse during the NVA final assault in April of '75, the mass surrenders of the Iraqi Army in the '91 Persian Gulf War and the Afghan Army melting away in the face of the Taliban offensive in Aug. of '21.
May 12, 20233:16 PM CDTLast Updated 3 hours ago Russia acknowledges retreat north of Bakhmut, Wagner boss calls it a 'rout'
Summary
Russia says some troops north of Bakhmut pull back to regroup 'A rout, not a regrouping,' says mercenary head Russia says 1,000 men, 40 tanks involved in Ukrainian assault Ukraine military says its forces advance
KYIV, May 12 (Reuters) - Moscow acknowledged on Friday that its forces had fallen back north of Ukraine's battlefield city of Bakhmut after a new Ukrainian offensive, in a retreat that the head of Russia's Wagner private army called a rout.
The setback for Russia, which follows similar reports of Ukrainian advances south of the city, suggests a coordinated push by Kyiv to encircle Russian forces in Bakhmut, Moscow's main objective for months during the war's bloodiest fighting.
"In three days of counter-offensive activity, the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Bakhmut sector have liberated 17.3 sq. km (6.6 sq. miles) of territory," Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for the "east" group of Ukrainian forces, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Both sides are now reporting the biggest Ukrainian gains in six months, although Ukraine has given few details and played down suggestions a huge, long-planned counteroffensive has officially begun.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Ukraine had launched an assault north of Bakhmut with more than 1,000 troops and up to 40 tanks, a scale that if confirmed would amount to the biggest Ukrainian offensive since November.
The Russians had repelled 26 attacks but troops in one area had fallen back to regroup in more favourable positions near the Berkhivka reservoir northwest of Bakhmut, Konashenkov said.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner forces that have led the campaign in the city, said in an audio message: "What Konashenkov described, unfortunately, is called 'a rout' and not a regrouping".
In a separate video message, Prigozhin said the Ukrainians had seized high ground overlooking Bakhmut and opened the main highway leading into the city from the West.
"The loss of the Berkhivka reservoir - the loss of this territory they gave up - that's 5 sq km, just today," Prigozhin said.
"The enemy has completely freed up the Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut road which we had blocked. The enemy is now able to use this road, and secondly they have taken tactical high ground under which Bakhmut is located," said Prigozhin, who has repeatedly denounced Russia's regular military over the past week for failing to supply his men in Bakhmut.
Russian-installed officials said two missiles hit an industrial complex in Luhansk, in Russian-occupied territory around 100 km (60 miles) behind the front. Video posted on the internet showed huge columns of smoke above the city. The strike, just beyond the range of the main battlefield rockets Ukraine has previously deployed, came a day after Britain announced it was sending longer-range cruise missiles.
Ukrainian servicemen ride atop of a tank on a road to the frontline town of Bakhmut, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 12, 2023. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova
The Ukrainian advance near Bakhmut appears to have begun on Tuesday when a Ukrainian unit southwest of the city said it defeated a Russian brigade, recapturing a swathe of land. Prigozhin also said the Russian brigade there fled.
Reuters has not been able to independently verify the situation in the area.
In its evening report on Friday, the Ukrainian military command described fighting in Bakhmut and Russian shelling of nearby towns, but made no mention of any advance or Russian withdrawal.
Prigozhin, whose fighters have been battling to push Ukrainian forces out of Bakhmut's Western outskirts, has said the north and south flanks, guarded by regular Russian troops, were crumbling. Russia's defence ministry denies this.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russians were "already internally ready for defeat".
"They have already lost this war in their minds. We must put pressure on them every day so that their sense of defeat turns into their flight, their mistakes, their losses."
TURNING POINT
In Kostiantynivka, about 20 km (12 miles) southwest of Bakhmut, firefighters were battling a blaze at a house that went up in flames after it was struck by Russian shells.
"It hit the roof and the roof collapsed. My neighbour rushed outside and started shouting, asking for help," said Oleksandr Lazorka, who lives next door. "We pulled out a blind woman - an elderly, blind woman - from under the rubble and then the fire erupted."
The 15-month-old war in Ukraine is at a turning point, after six months during which Kyiv kept its troops on the defensive while Russia mounted a winter campaign that brought the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two but yielded scant gains.
Since the start of this year, Kyiv has received hundreds of new Western tanks and armoured vehicles, holding them back in preparation for a counteroffensive to recapture occupied territory.
Ukrainian officials have played down the suggestion that their offensive is already under way: Zelenskiy said in an interview this week Kyiv needed more time for equipment to arrive. Prigozhin called that deceptive and said the Bakhmut advances amounted to the start of Kyiv's campaign.
Reporting by Reuters bureaux Writing by Kevin Liffey
Continued: Bakhmut has been at the epicenter of the war in eastern Ukraine for months: a mostly ruined city where tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have died, and the only place over hundreds of miles on the front where Russia was consistently on the attack .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/06/world/europe/russia-offensive-maps.html . That changed this week, as Ukraine put Russian forces on the defensive, presenting them with a difficult strategic decision about reinforcing the city and setting off a new round of recriminations between Russian commanders.
Videos released on Friday by Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade showed soldiers piling out of armored personnel carriers .. https://t.me/BiletskyAndriy/5119 .. and assaulting a Russian trench. “Forward, forward!” a soldier yelled in the video, filmed on a helmet camera. The soldiers dived for cover as Russian fighters threw a hand grenade, then ran forward and threw their own grenade into a Russian bunker. The video could not be independently verified.
Military medics helping a wounded soldier on the road near Bakhmut on Thursday. Boghdan Kutiepov/Associated Press
“The defensive phase of the battle for Bakhmut is ending,” said Andriy Biletsky, who has ultimate command of the brigade, among other units in the Ukrainian Army. Now, he said, Ukraine would ramp up the pressure on the Russians from the north and south.
“We advanced a little more on our flank,” said a drone operator in the Adam Tactical Group, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Sem. In an interview on Friday, he described an overnight seesaw battle to the south of Bakhmut, in which Russian soldiers tried to recapture a position but were repelled by a Ukrainian artillery bombardment.
The State of the War[Long links inside]
Looming Counteroffensive: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said his country needed more time to begin its assault against Russia because it does not yet have enough military equipment from its Western backers.
The Battle for Bakhmut: In their first gains in the area in months, Ukrainian troops broke through Russian positions outside the embattled eastern city and forced Russian units back from a key position near a canal.
A.F.P. Journalist Death: A video journalist working for the French news agency was killed by rocket fire near the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine.
Evacuation Orders: Running short of food, fuel and cash, many civilians in occupied parts of Ukraine are defying a Russian directive to evacuate ahead of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Another Ukrainian soldier, who gave his call sign as Bandit, said that the artillery and rocket fire echoing around the hills near Bakhmut was “all our fire going to the Russian side.”
“We are still learning the enemy and want to see what he is doing in this situation,” he said, adding that Ukrainian soldiers were testing Russian positions and “clearing one forest belt after another.”
A retreat from Bakhmut, a city that lacks strategic importance but has become a symbolic prize, would represent an embarrassing setback for the Russian military. Russia has not captured a Ukrainian city since last July, and had pressed ahead into Bakhmut despite soaring losses.
Labelled map Sources: Territorial control based on Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project data as of May 11 By The New York Times
Ukrainian advances this week have cut through Russian lines in the largest bulge by only about three miles, but the success erased what Moscow’s forces had painstakingly achieved over several months.
That presents Russia with a difficult choice. If Russia does not reinforce the flanking positions around Bakhmut, it risks a politically humiliating setback. But if it diverts reserve forces toward the city, it could weaken defenses in the south, where many analysts expect Ukraine to strike toward the Sea of Azov in an attempt to cut off a supply route to occupied Crimea.
The stakes of Ukraine’s offensive extend to the country’s efforts to secure more aid: A military breakthrough could persuade Western officials to send even more matériel, while failure or stalemate could push them to curtail support or encourage negotiations. European foreign ministers urged China’s top diplomat this week to make Beijing do more .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/09/world/europe/china-eu-russia-ukraine-war.html .. to resolve the war, and China, which has cast itself as a potential mediator while giving Russia diplomatic and economic help, announced an envoy would visit Ukraine and Russia next week.
Bakhmut in late April. The city has been a focus of fighting between Ukraine and Russia for nearly a year. Libkos/Associated Press
So Ukrainian leaders, keenly aware of their reliance on Western support, have taken pains to distinguish recent attacks from the broader offensive. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, this week described Ukraine’s actions as mostly defensive, but said soldiers were able to “carry out effective counterattacks.”
“In some areas of the front, the enemy could not withstand the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers,” he said in a statement.
But Russian military bloggers have responded with alarm to Kyiv’s gains near Bakhmut. The bloggers, who often report from the front and have links to various commanders or the Wagner mercenary group, are fiercely pro-war and can be influential within Russia, urging Moscow to commit more resources to the fight.
“Wagner gave a lot of blood and sweat for this territory, some gave their lives,” wrote Aleksandr Yaremchuk, a Russian military correspondent aligned with Wagner, whose fighters have led the nearly yearlong fight for Bakhmut. “It’s hard for me to believe that other units are so easily abandoning their positions.”
The outcry drew a rare acknowledgment of by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which on Friday said its forces retreated in one area around Bakhmut.
The head of Wagner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, appeared to support the bloggers’ assessment. On Thursday, he posted an open letter to Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, about the losses on the flanking positions, saying that “the enemy carried out several successful counterattacks.”
A photo from a video released by Wagner group last week showing its head, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, and his troops in an unknown location. Prigozhin Press Service, via Associated Press
The flurry of posts, videos and statements also exposed tensions and rifts among Russia’s disparate forces in Ukraine. Mr. Prigozhin, long an aggressive critic of Mr. Shoigu and other top defense officials, this week issued a series of expletive-laden audio and video messages, including with comments that some observers interpreted as his first direct criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Cracks appeared elsewhere, too, as the Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whose paramilitary forces have fought alongside Wagner in Ukraine, criticized Mr. Prigozhin, his longtime ally, in a video broadside.
Some prominent Russian pro-war bloggers warned that the animosity was beginning to affect battlefield performance at a crucial moment.
“There is no single command that is respected without exception,” wrote one blogger .. https://t.me/akashevarova/6372 , Anastasia Kashevarova. “We have a mass of people at the front, and no one can reach an agreement with each other.”
“The enemy,” she added, “is using this.”
In Chasiv Yar, just a few miles from Bakhmut, on Tuesday. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Reporting was contributed by Anatoly Kurmanaev, Maria Varenikova, Riley Mellen, Ishaan Jhaveri and Dmitriy Khavin.
Marc Santora is the international news editor based in London, focusing on breaking news events. He was previously the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. @MarcSantoraNYT
Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. @AndrewKramerNYT
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