The Wall Street Journal, citing Ukrainian officers, reported that in recent months one of the most trained units of the Ukrainian forces has been liquidated in the Artemivsk area.
According to the newspaper: “Officers of some other brigades say that several units, including the most trained ones, have been defeated during the fighting in the Artemovsk (Bakhmut) region in recent months.”
Meanwhile, as the publication points out, the brigades of the city district differ in the level of training and cannot always properly interact with each other.
According to the commander of the Ukrainian company: “Our positions were overrun because the nearest battalion, recruited from poorly trained volunteers, left their area without warning.”
The city of Artyomovsk is located in the part of the Donetsk People’s Republic that Kyiv still controls, north of the city of Gorlovka, and is an important transport hub for supplying Ukrainian forces in the Donbas with equipment and ammunition.
On Friday, Jan Gaggen, acting adviser to the President of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said that the founder of the “Wagner” forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that the “Wagnerites” had established an operational blockade of the city of Artemovsk.
On Saturday, two Ukrainian security officials reported that their units had been ordered to leave Artemivsk immediately.
Earlier, Sergei Rakhmanin, a member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, said that the situation in Artemivsk was very critical.
And on Tuesday, Ukrainian security officials complained in an interview with the American television channel CNN about the situation in Artemivsk, noting that in all areas the situation is much worse than Kyiv officially declares.
As Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, the establishment of control over Artemivsk by Russian troops will be a step towards the liberation of the entire Donetsk People’s Republic.
Source: News
