from ZeroHedge:
As we detailed Wednesday, Russian forces have at this point taken full control of the eastern part of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut as one of the bloodiest battles of the year-long war appears close to ending.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has since acknowledged that Bakhmut might fall to Russian forces in the “coming days” amid reports of rapid gains, which has been spearheaded by the Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group. “We cannot rule out that Bakhmut may eventually fall in the coming days,” Stoltenberg told a press briefing in Stockholm. But like with statements from Pentagon generals of late, he quickly tried to downplay the city’s strategic importance.
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Stoltenberg described that its capture by the Russian military won’t “necessarily reflect any turning point of the war”.
The Kyiv Independent recently interviewed soldiers on the frontline and issued a surprisingly blunt assessment (given it’s obviously a news source on the Ukrainian side) that Ukrainian soldiers are by and large “unprepared, poorly-trained battalions being thrown into the front line meat grinder to survive as best they could with little support from armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, drones and tactical information.”
Russia appears to be capitalizing on its momentum in the Donetsk region, by many accounts firing what’s possibly the largest barrage of missiles so far this year. The Wall Street Journal reports Thursday:
Russia fired dozens of missiles at Kyiv and other regions across Ukraine overnight, striking civilian infrastructure and the country’s defense industry in one of the biggest barrages this year as its forces continued to claw more territory in the east.
Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said Russia had launched 81 missiles of different varieties from air, land and sea, in addition to eight Iranian-made attack drones. Four of the drones and 34 cruise missiles were intercepted, Gen. Zaluzhny said.
