Fighting ‘especially hot’ in Bakhmut – Zelenskiy 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut is particularly hot.

Zelenskiy, in his Sunday night video address, thanked soldiers for fighting in Avdiivka, Maryinka, and Bakhmut, giving no indication the city had finally fallen to Russia as claimed by the founder of the Wagner mercenary force.

“Especially Bakhmut. It is especially hot there,” he said.

The founder of the Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had said that his troops, involved in a months-long effort to encircle and capture the bombed-out city, raised a Russian flag on its administrative building.

“From a legal point of view, Bakhmut has been taken. The enemy is concentrated in the western parts,” Prigozhin said in a video posted on his press service’s Telegram account on Sunday.

But there was no indication from Ukrainian officials that Bakhmut, a town of 70,000 before the Russian invasion launched over a year ago, had fallen into Russian hands.

Prigozhin has previously made claims that were premature.

Ukraine’s military said in a Monday update Bakhmut and several other towns including Avdiivka was at the “epicentre of hostilities”.

“The enemy continues its assault on the city of Bakhmut. However, our defenders courageously hold the city,” the military said.

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Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said fighting had engulfed the centre of Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces had repelled 25 enemy attacks, but Russian forces had captured the AZOM metal plant.

“The enemy is attacking the city centre from the north, the east and the south and is trying to take the city under its full control,” Zhdanov, who has close ties to the Ukrainian military, said in a video on YouTube.

Nuclear threat

Russian envoy to Belarus, Boris Gryzlov, told Belarusian state television on Sunday that Russia will move tactical nuclear weapons close to the western borders of Belarus.

The weapons “will increase the possibilities to ensure security.” Gryzlov said.

“This will be done despite the noise in Europe and the United States.”

The move will place the weapons at NATO’s threshold in a deployment likely to escalate Moscow’s standoff with the West.

Zainab Sa’id