Battle for Bakhmut lost in fog of war

TALLINN, Estonia — Russian TV went into a full frenzy of celebration as it reported Moscow’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

There were comparisons to the Red Army liberating Berlin in 1945, congratulations relayed from President Vladimir Putin and announcers emphasizing the victory by using the city’s nearly century-old Soviet name of Artyomovsk.

“The myth that Artyomovsk is an unassailable fortress has been crushed,” an anchor said Sunday night on Channel One, Russia’s most popular state broadcaster. “Those are historic events.”

A report from the smoldering city in eastern Ukraine followed, showing Russian fighters yelling “Victory!” and placing two flags — the Russian tricolor and the black flag of the private military contractor Wagner — atop a tall, partly destroyed building.

The flags were mounted “so that everyone could see them,” the correspondent said, even though the bombed-out, deserted 400-year-old city looks like a ghost of itself after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

Despite the Russian claims, top Ukrainian military leaders say the fight there is not over, even though they still control only a small part of the city. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Monday that Ukrainian troops hold parts of its southwestern outskirts, while fighting continues for the strategic heights in the northern and southern suburbs.

But Kyiv says its troops played a key role in the strategy of exhausting Russian forces. Tens of thousands of fighters on both sides have died in the grinding nine-month battle for Bakhmut.
Satellite imagery shows infrastructure, apartment blocks and buildings reduced to rubble from relentless artillery attacks.

Putin badly needed a victory in Bakhmut, analysts say, especially after a winter offensive by his forces failed to take other front-line cities and towns. And Russia still wants to capture the entire Donetsk region — a goal that was emphasized several months after the assault on Kyiv failed.

On Channel One, a Russian fighter told the correspondent he felt “probably the same emotions our grandfathers had in Berlin,” referring to the Red Army’s victorious sweep of the German capital at the end of World War II.

A similar segment on Russia 1, another major state TV channel, saw a correspondent proclaim that “the fight for Bakhmut ended in defeat” for Ukraine. Now Russian forces can advance toward the cities of Siversk, Kostyantynivka and Kramatorsk, and even the southeastern city of Dnipro in southeastern Ukraine, she said.

Two pro-Kremlin tabloids came out with headlines Monday celebrating the reported capture of the city.

“Bakhmut is taken. What next? The city has again become Artyomovsk,” said a bright red headline on the front of Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The fog of war made it impossible to confirm the situation inside Bakhmut, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the city was not fully occupied.