Fight for Bakhmut goes on as Ukraine continues to hold city

Intense fighting has continued in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut as both Kyiv and Moscow seemingly struggle with ammunition shortages and mounting casualties.

Ukrainian forces still control the city despite the street fighting, the deputy mayor of Bakhmut, Oleksandr Marchenko, told BBC Radio 4. Though Russian forces are pounding the routes out of the city, they have publicly pleaded with Moscow for more supplies. Ukrainian troops said one woman was killed and two men were injured attempting to cross a makeshift bridge on Sunday.

The Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who controls the mercenary Wagner force that is leading the Russian offensive in Bakhmut, warned late on Saturday that if his men were forced to withdraw, it could lead to the collapse of the entire Russian frontline.

Nazarenko said that Russian forces lacked ammunition and were shelling the city chaotically. But, likewise, Ukrainian forces told the BBC in February that they were also running out of firepower.

Western military analysts have been predicting that Ukraine would order a tactical withdrawal from Bakhmut, to stem losses and regroup. But the Ukrainian military insisted they were staying put, with spokesperson for the east, Serhiy Cherevatyi, denying on Saturday that they were planning to withdraw in an interview with CNN.

There have been signs that Ukraine is preparing for a retreat, with videos emerging over the last few weeks of destroyed bridges on the Ukrainian-controlled side.

Thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have been killed and injured in the battle for Bakhmut, and military analysts and Ukrainian forces have said it would serve as a symbolic victory for Russia if they took the city after a string of defeats last year.

Videos from Bakhmut in the past week show many buildings charred, collapsed or without windows. The few thousand civilians still living in the town have been confined to living in basements for months with no running water, electricity or gas.

Other fought-over towns in the area have been completely erased from the map. Drone footage published last week of Marinka, a town that used to border the 2014 frontline, and is located south of Bakhmut, showed the town had been reduced to rubble.