Live: Fighting intensifies around Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut

Issued on: 05/02/2023 – 11:42

11:10am: Fierce fighting in north of Ukraine’s Bakhmut, says Russian head of Wagner militia

The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia said on Sunday that fierce fighting was ongoing in the northern parts of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been the focus of Russian forces’ attention for weeks. Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder and head of the Wagner Group, said his soldiers were “fighting for every street, every house, every stairwell” against Ukrainian forces who were not retreating.

Russian forces have been attempting to encircle and capture Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donbas region, for weeks, and appear to be making slow, grinding and costly progress.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said repeatedly in recent days that the situation around the city is tough. “Nobody will give away Bakhmut. We will fight for as long as we can. We consider Bakhmut our fortress,” he said on Friday.

Britain’s defence ministry said on Sunday Russia had made “small advances” in its attempt to encircle Bakhmut.

8:45am: Ukraine’s forces still hold Bilohorivka, last part of Luhansk region

Ukrainian forces remained in control of the village of Bilohorivka, the Luhansk region governor Serhiy Haidai said on Sunday: “The situation at the front is tense, but controlled by Ukrainian forces,” Haidai said.

“Information is being spread in the Russian Federation about the alleged capture of Bilohorivka and the removal of our people from there,” Haidai told the national broadcaster. “Our troops remain in their positions, nobody has captured Bilohorivka, nobody has entered there, there is no enemy there.”

Some Moscow-installed officials and pro-Russian military bloggers have recently claimed Russian advances in the direction of Bilohorivka, the last part of Luhansk held by Ukrainian forces.

“The number of Russian attacks has … increased, but all of them have been repulsed by our troops, who remain in their positions.”

07:40am: Russian missile hits residential building in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, mayor says

Two Russian missiles hit the centre of Kharkiv, the administrative capital of the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, with one of the missiles striking a residential building, the city’s mayor said on Sunday.

“At this time, it known that there is a fire in one of the residential buildings and one injured person,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging platform.

7:35am: Germany’s Scholz says Putin ‘has not threatened me or Germany’ in telephone calls

Russian President Vladimir Putin in his telephone conversations with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz “has not made any threats against me or Germany”, Scholz said in an interview with Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary early this week, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile strike that would “only take a minute”. The Kremlin said Johnson was lying.

Scholz said the conversations he had with Putin made it clear they had very different views of the war in Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.

“I made it very clear to Putin that Russia has sole responsibility for the war,” Scholz said. “Russia has invaded its neighbour for no reason, in order to take parts of Ukraine or the whole country under its control.” 

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)