Ukrainian forces over the past day repelled scores of attacks along the front line in the east, where Russian troops have been keeping up the pressure on the city of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military said on March 23, as the NATO chief warned that Western countries must be prepared to support Kyiv in a protracted war.
Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensives, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war, click here.
Ukrainian defenders repelled 83 Russian attacks over the past 24 hours, most of them directed at Bakhmut, the city in the Donetsk region that has become the epicenter of Moscow’s offensive in the east, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its morning bulletin on March 23.
Russians kept their pressure on other settlements in Donetsk, such as Lyman, Avdiyivka, Maryinka, and Shakhtarsk, the military said, adding that “the enemy is losing a significant amount of manpower, weapons, and military equipment.”
The claims could not be independently verified.
General Oleksandr Syrskiy, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said on March 23 that the Russians’ relentless push in Bakhmut is beginning to take its toll on their strength and that Ukrainians are preparing to take advantage of their enemy’s perceived weakness “very soon.”
“The aggressor has not given up hope of taking Bakhmut whatever the cost, despite losses in manpower and equipment. Russia’s main fighting force in this area is the Wagner mercenary group,” Syrskiy said on Telegram.
“Not sparing anything, they are losing significant strength and becoming fatigued. Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, like we did near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balaklia and Kupyansk,” he said.
British military intelligence has also suggested that Moscow’s relentless pressure on Bakhmut, which has been mostly turned to rubble, is beginning to lose momentum in the face of Ukraine’s staunch defense amid serious losses sustained by both sides.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who visited the Bakhmut area on March 22, presented decorations to the Ukrainian defenders and was briefed on the operational situation on the front line, his press service said.
As fighting raged in the east, Russian air strikes on Ukrainian cities on March 22 killed at least 10 people, at least eight of them when two dormitories were hit at a school in Rzhyshchiv, south of Kyiv.
A missile strike on an apartment block in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhya killed one person and injured 29.
In the southern city of Kherson, one person was killed by Russian shelling overnight of residential buildings and a cardiology hospital, the local military administration said on March 23.
Zelenskiy said Moscow’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians shows Russia is not interested in peace and accused Russia of “bestial savagery” for targeting civilians.
Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin does not appear to be interested in immediate peace and was engaged “in a war of attrition.”
In an interview with The Guardian, the NATO chief said Putin was “reaching out to authoritarian regimes like Iran or North Korea and others to try to get more weapons.”
He said Russia was boosting its military production capacity and cautioned that Ukraine’s Western allies must be prepared to supply Kyiv with weapons, ammunition, and military equipment for a long period of time.
“President Putin doesn’t plan for peace. He’s planning for more war,” Stoltenberg said.
