Ukraine’s Bakhmut Gains Buoying Troops Ahead of Counter: Kyiv Official

Ukrainian troops fighting on the eastern front are already making small, but symbolically powerful, gains against Russian units, according to a senior Ukrainian lawmaker.

Oleksandr Korniyenko, the first deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada—Ukraine’s parliament—told Newsweek Saturday on the sidelines of the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia that Ukrainian troops are achieving “something great” around the devastated city of Bakhmut, where for several months Kyiv’s units have been weathering a bloody Russian attritional offensive.

“For the last two days we have taken back 2.5 kilometers of our territory,” Korniyenko said. “It’s not huge, but it’s enough for our soldiers to feel like they did something great. Because it was not only about Russia getting out, but about the creative thinking and bravery of our guys.”

Ukrainian forces claim to have advanced around 2 kilometers around Bakhmut over the past week, reversing some of the gains made by Russian forces—fronted by Wager Group mercenaries—in almost 10 months of fighting.

Slow and costly Russian advances had left Ukrainian troops confined to the extreme western edge of the destroyed city, but now Kyiv’s units appear to be trying to flank Bakhmut.

“The defensive operation towards Bakhmut is continuing,” the commander of Ukrainian ground troops, Oleksander Syrsky, wrote on Telegram this weekend. “Our soldiers are advancing in some areas of the frontline, and the enemy is losing equipment and troops.”

Moscow acknowledged the setback, with Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov saying Russian troops had “occupied a new frontier” at the Berkhivske reservoir to the northwest of Bakhmut.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and multiple Russian military bloggers framed the development as a defeat. The repositioning around Berkhivske, Prigozhin said, “unfortunately is called a rout and not a regrouping.”

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s defense ministry for comment via email.

It is not clear if the push around Bakhmut represents Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive, which Kyiv has been teasing for months. Ukrainian leaders have been sending conflicting messages about the planned operation.

Multiple senior officials have said that attacking forces are ready, but President Volodymyr Zelensky declared last week that the counteroffensive would be delayed due to a lack of equipment.

Ukrainian figures and foreign partners have also been urging counterparts and the media not to overhype the coming operation, fearing that an underwhelming counterattack might sap international support for Ukraine’s ambitions for full national liberation.

“What does it mean, a successful counteroffensive? Who decides?” Korniyenko asked Newsweek.

“It will not be light work for our army,” he added. “In this time, Russia became stronger in defense, they built some fortresses, some special [defenses], dragon teeth, et cetera. But the dragon teeth are also part of their informational war. Because they haven’t put them on all 1,300 kilometers of the front line. That’s impossible.”

Russia’s September partial mobilization brought 300,000 mobilized troops into the armed forces, part of the Kremlin’s effort to reconstitute the units that were badly mauled in the opening stages of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. These new troops have had months to train and integrate.

Former Soviet leader Joesph Stalin is credited with the assertion that “quantity has a quality all its own” when discussing military strength. Korniyenko said the Kremlin appears to be retesting that theory, as well as that of legendary World War Two Marshall Georgy Zhukov who—when faced with high personnel losses—is said to have replied: “Women will give birth to more.”

Korniyenko said the current Kremlin incumbents should not expect to be as successful as their Soviet predecessors.

“The amount of Russian troops is not the most [important] factor,” he said. “It’s more about effective use of those troops. If Russia, by some miracle, started to do this?…I don’t believe it, because last time they didn’t. Last year they didn’t. It looked like a competition to be the most ineffective in the use of troops.”

While its troops seek more territorial liberation in the coming weeks and months, Kyiv is also looking for more Western weapons—particularly the F-16 fighter jets that have so far been refused—and concrete progress on its NATO membership bid. But Korniyenko was clear that Ukraine’s priority is battlefield success. “We need to concentrate on our tasks,” he said.

Hopes that sudden political crises in Russia will change the Ukrainian dynamic have so far proved fruitless. Korniyenko said Kyiv is not holding out for such developments.

“Any country that makes a strategic decision to fight another in the center of Europe in the 21st century is going to have a problem,” he said. “But it’s probably not going to be a problem between the people and the Kremlin. Because the people support the Kremlin.”

He added: “Russia can resist any internal problems. Between Kremlin factions, between the FSB and the army, inside the army, between Prigozhin and another, between the center and the regions.

“Historically, usually, in Russia, these processes were realized by internal palace revolutions. One time in history it was a people’s revolution with Vladimir Lenin. But all previous times were palace revolutions.

“Now, it’s not so important for us. Right now, we need to win on the battlefield.”