Russia is deploying the most experienced units of the mercenary Wagner group and its army in an attempt to seize the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military has said. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, was pictured visiting the frontline city on Friday for briefings with local commanders on how to boost defence capacity.
The boss of the Wagner mercenary group said his fighters have “practically encircled” Bakhmut. Only one road remains under Ukrainian control, Yevgeny Prigozhin added in a video posted online in which he called on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to abandon the city. His claims could not be verified.
The situation in Bakhmut appeared to be extremely precarious amid evidence that Ukraine was preparing extensive new defensive positions, including around the nearby city of Kramatorsk. Video posted online showed the blowing up of a railway bridge over the Bakhmutka River to the east of the city, while other footage purported to show damage to a small road bridge.
Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.
The US president, Joe Biden, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, met at the White House on Friday, where both leaders praised each other’s country’s support towards Ukraine. “As Nato allies, we’re making the alliance stronger and more capable,” Biden said. Scholz told Biden that it was important that the US and Germany organised in “lockstep” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, made an unannounced trip to Ukraine on Friday, according to Department of Justice officials. Garland had traveled to the western city of Lviv on an invitation from the Ukrainian prosecutor general, USA Today reported officials saying.
Serbia has denied that it has supplied weapons to Ukraine, its foreign minister said. Following Moscow’s demand on Thursday to know whether Serbia provided thousands of rockets to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Ivica Dačić said that zero weapons have been exported from the country to any parties involved in the “conflict”.
The US has announced a new military aid package of ammunition and other support for Ukraine worth $400m. The package will be funded using presidential drawdown authority, which authorises the president to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has said he is confident that western countries will supply fighter jets to Kyiv, and that he is optimistic that the war will end this year. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Reznikov said Ukraine expects to receive “two to three different types” of fighter jets and that he believed it would be “done through a kind of coalition again”, referring to the “tank coalition” of Leopard 2 tanks from western allies.
The EU’s foreign policy chief said he saw a “small improvement” in diplomacy with Russia after a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Delhi. Josep Borrell said Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, remained in the room when western countries criticised Russia – unlike at the last G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali last year, when he stormed out.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, has again issued a denial that Ukraine has mounted any attacks within Russian territory. Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had been hit by a “terrorist attack” in Bryansk and vowed to crush what he said was a Ukrainian sabotage group that had fired at civilians. Ukraine accused Russia of staging a false “provocation”. The Kremlin said on Friday it would take measures to prevent a repeat of what it described as a border incursion.
