Russian forces have been building up positions for weeks for what is the second line of defense in case the Ukrainian army is forced to withdraw from Bakhmut.
This Thursday Moscow assured that its troops were on the verge of completing the siege of Ukrainian fighters who still resisted in the city.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Evgeny Prigozhin, who is suffering heavy losses as a result of the Russian offensive, immediately corrected the Ministry of Defense.
“Bloody battles are still ongoing, so it is too early to speak of a complete encirclement of Bakhmut,” he said before adding that more than eighty percent of Bakhmut would be under Russian control.
For its part, the Ukrainian army prefers to reveal the price that the Bakhmut battle is costing the enemy.
At a press conference, the deputy head of the main operational department of the Ukrainian military general staff Oleksii Hromov acknowledged that Bakhmut continues to be the most difficult battlefront, adding that in the last two weeks Russia would have already lost around 4,500 men, mercenaries and regular forces.