Russian forces are still creeping forward at reportedly high cost in eastern Ukraine, as political and military leaders in Kyiv warn their Western partners that the risk of battlefield defeat remains.
The Institute for the Study of War's latest update noted recent success for Moscow's forces around Bakhmut. This is the destroyed city emblematic of Russia's plodding and bloody war of attrition in the eastern Donetsk Oblast.
"Russian forces recently also advanced northeast and west of Bakhmut amid continued positional fighting in the area," the ISW wrote. Geolocated combat footage, the think tank added, indicates Russian gains around the settlement of Vesele to the northeast of Bakhmut, close to Berestove to the northeast of Bakhmut. It shows that troops "seized a large portion of southern Ivanivske" to Bakhmut's west.
Fighting has been constant around the devastated city since the summer of 2022. It became the focus of Russia's grinding eastern offensive later that year, eventually falling to Moscow's forces—led by Wagner Group mercenaries augmented by fighters recruited from Russian jails—in May 2023.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.
Back-and-forth positional fighting has continued ever since. Ukrainian forces appeared to have the edge there shortly after the city fell and as Kyiv launched its own summer 2023 counteroffensive. However, their gains ultimately proved meager.
The continued fighting around Bakhmut is part of a larger trend of gradual Russian advances on Ukraine's eastern front, stretching from the forested battlefields of Luhansk in the northeast to the artillery-pockmarked plains of Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.
Russia's most-notable recent success came in its capture of the fortified settlement of Avdiivka—on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk city—which has been a flashpoint since the onset of Moscow's aggression against Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat west of the town, bombed out by Russian glide bombs and overwhelmed by Russian artillery superiority. Commanders there complained that they could not hold the area given the sudden drop-off of munitions supplies coming from Ukraine's Western partners.
Kyiv's troops appear to have largely stemmed the Russian advance in the rural areas outside of Avdiivka, but fierce fighting continues there. Intense combat is also ongoing in northern Donetsk Oblast, with Russian troops seemingly hoping to punch through to the city of Lyman.
"Russian forces conducted a battalion-sized mechanized assault near Tonenke (west of Avdiivka) around March 30 and a roughly reinforced platoon-sized mechanized assault near Terny (west of Kreminna) around April 3," the ISW wrote.
"The size of these recent mechanized assaults may indicate that the Russian military is currently prioritizing offensive operations in the order of the Avdiivka, Bakhmut, and Lyman directions."
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