Ukrainian artillery operators have stopped a Russian assault on the fiercely contested eastern city of Bakhmut, Kyiv's military said on Monday, as Ukraine moves forward with its ongoing counteroffensive.
Moscow's troops were "preparing to attack Ukrainian positions along an important route at night" near the decimated settlement, which has borne the brunt of almost a year of heavy fighting, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Monday.
But as the troops approached, Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance scouts from a mechanized brigade detected the fighters and Ukrainian artillery targeted the assault group, the General Staff said. Newsweek could not independently verify these battlefield reports, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Bakhmut has been labeled a "meat-grinder," becoming one of the most prominent hotspots of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. The city, although lacking in strategic value, holds symbolic significance for whichever side gains control over the now-emptied settlement.
In an operational update on Monday, the General Staff said Russian troops largely focused their efforts around Bakhmut, the Donetsk city of Lyman and other settlements in the region, as well as the Kharkiv city of Kupiansk.
There were 35 combat clashes over the past day, the General Staff said on Monday morning. Kyiv's forces repelled several Russian attacks in villages near Bakhmut "under the dense fire of the enemy's artillery," the military said.
Russian forces lost 660 fighters, 11 tanks and 17 artillery systems in the past 24 hours, the General Staff added.
Ukrainian forces lost 615 troops in the same time frame, Russia's Defense Ministry said on Monday, adding that Ukrainian attacks were repelled in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Ukrainian fighters carried out offensive actions on the southern flank of Bakhmut, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, said on Monday. Kyiv's troops "continue to advance there gradually but confidently," she said in a post to social media.
Ukraine retook 1.5 square mile of territory around Bakhmut in the last week, she added, bringing a total figure in the area to 13.5 square miles of retaken territory.
This comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukraine had already retaken around half of the territory Russia had initially seized. On June 26, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace told U.K. lawmakers that Ukraine had recaptured around 300 square kilometers (just over 115 square miles) of territory by that point, which is "more territory than Russia seized in its whole winter offensive."
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Blinken said Russia had put in place strong defenses, but said these "are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive."
"Unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their future, for their country, for their freedom," said Blinken. "I think that is the decisive element and that's going to play out. But it will not play out over the next week or two; we're still looking, I think, at several months."
On Sunday, the U.S.-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said that by one calculation, Ukrainian forces had taken back around 53 percent of the land Russian forces had occupied since February 2022. Kyiv's forces carried out counteroffensive operations on "at least three sectors of the front line" and advanced on Sunday, the think tank added.
But in an address to Russia's Security Council on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there were "no results, at least not yet" to show for the counteroffensive.
"However, now the fire of war is intensely kindled," he said, according to a Kremlin readout.
