The Ukrainians are preparing to carry out a counter-offensive near Bakhmout | War in Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers prepare their ammunition on the front line near the city of Bakhmout.

Ukrainian forces are preparing for a counter-offensive on Sunday which they say should not linger in the Bakhmut region, a city in eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have been trying to take since the summer at the cost of heavy casualties.

The Russian army continues its attacks in parallel in other regions. The authorities have thus announced that a strike in the morning left at least three dead and two injured in Kherson, a southern city liberated by the Kiev army in November after several months of occupation. /p>

In Bakhmout, the current epicenter of the conflict, Yevgeny Prigojine, the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner, claimed a new progression of his men who are fighting there first line.

This is the municipal administration building, the administrative center of the city, he said on Saturday, pointing from the roof of a building to another building, as a sign. #x27;illustration of this advance.

It's a kilometer two hundred. This is the area, there is fighting going on, he added in a video released by the press service of his company Concord, unverifiable words from an independent source for the time being.< /p>

Excerpt from a video with Wagner's boss, Yevgeny Prigojine, where he asks the Ukrainian president to withdraw his Bakhmout's troops. (File photo)

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had repelled more than 100 enemy attacks in the main combat areas the day before.

On the same day, the UK Ministry of Defense announced that within the last four days the Wagner Group had taken control of most of eastern Bakhmout.

Ukrainian forces control the west of the city and have demolished key bridges over the river that crosses it, the ministry said.

The real heroes are the defenders who hold the Eastern Front on their shoulders, Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Syrsky praised.

“You have to buy time to accumulate reserves and launch a counter-offensive, which is not far away.

— Oleksandre Syrsky, Commander of Ground Forces of Ukraine

When the war started, we didn't have drones. Missions were more complicated and less effective. But in the summer we started getting drones and other equipment. Today we are more efficient, Petro, the pilot of one of the three MI-8 attack helicopters which had just carried out a raid, told AFP. against a target near Bakhmout.

The Russians have been trying for several weeks to encircle this city of some 70,000 inhabitants before the conflict and have succeeded in cutting off several important supply routes for Ukrainian soldiers.

Bakhmout, a peacetime city of some 70,000, now has less than 5,000 civilians. The fighting that took place there almost completely destroyed the city. (File photo)

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanichyna conceded in an interview with Sunday Newspaper that it becomes complicated for us to resist and deter the forces in Bakhmout.

We estimate that the Russian army has already lost 150,000 men since last year in its military offensives on our soil. The human mass of her infantry is a formidable weapon, it seems inexhaustible in volume and time, she said.

While observers doubt the strategic importance of Bakhmout itself, this battle, the longest since the start of the Russian offensive more than a year ago, has acquired symbolic value. , both for Kiev and for Moscow, which would like to obtain a victory there after several humiliating reverses.

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The most important thing is to get the right amount of ammunition and move forward, hammered in his video Yevgeny Prigozhin, in open conflict with the military hierarchy Russia, in particular to obtain more ammunition.

He once again publicly attacked Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the ;general staff, Valery Gerasimov, calling them, ironically, exceptional military leaders.

I absolutely, totally support all their efforts, still mocked the one who constantly criticizes the strategy of the hierarchy on the ground.