The Polish general Waldemar Skrzypczak, former commander of the Land Forces, assured in an interview with the media “Faktem” that the capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Russia would mean “nothing” for the future of the war in Ukraine. If this town, the scene of bloody battles in recent months, finally fell, Vladirmir Putin’s armed forces would soon run into a Ukrainian defensive wall in the town of Kramatorsk, some 30 kilometers from Bakhmut.
Contrary to what many military strategists think, Skrzypczak believes that the Ukrainians can still attack Bakhmut and encircle the Russian troops in this city. “I am inclined to believe that the Russians are walking into a trap set for them by the Ukrainians. A trap that will allow the Ukrainians to carry out a side attack,” says the veteran commander.
General Waldemar Skrzypczak points out that if the Russians wanted to conquer all of Donbas (in eastern Ukraine), they would have to carry out a major operation to take control of the towns of Sloviansk and Kramatrosk. However, he believes that “the Russians at the moment do not have the potential to develop operations in the entire territory of Donbas.”
In his opinion, to carry out such an operation, the Russians would have to have at least a dozen brigades. It should be remembered that recently one of the Russian brigades trying to take full control of the city of Bakhmut abandoned its positions, leaving behind “500 corpses”. The former Polish high command believes that the Russian armed forces “do not have that force”. , predicts that “the Ukrainians have defensive positions with which they will break the attack of the Russian army. The question is: who will take the next step? In my opinion, the next step will be the Ukrainian one,” the general predicted.
Skrzypczak believes that the Ukrainians will attack the Russian troops from the flanks “and perhaps they will be able to subdue the troops that are in Bakhmut.” “I think this should be the intention of the Ukrainian commanders. Because why keep wasting good units fighting for the ruins?” he said, referring to the city of Bakhmut, turned into a ghost town and totally destroyed after months. of combat. “Decisions have to be made at the operational and tactical level. And the decision should be to launch a side attack on the Russian troops in the Bakhmut area. Roll and break them.”
The Government of Russia has affirmed in the last hours that the White House “organized” the destruction of Bakhmut as it did with the Japanese Hiroshima in World War II. Moscow made this statement after the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, drew a parallel between the two cases during the G7 summit.
“Volodimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan compared the case of Hiroshima, hit by an American nuclear bomb, with Artemovsk – Bakhmut’s name in Russian -. Well done, since, after all, the White House organized both cases,” said the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, in a message on Telegram.
Zelensky said on Sunday that the images of Hiroshima after the impact of the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States “really remind him” of Bakhmut and other Ukrainian cities destroyed as part of the Russian invasion, unleashed in February 2022 by order of the Russian president. , Vladimir Putin. “It’s the same. Nothing is left alive, all the buildings are in ruins,” he said, before insisting that Russian forces, supported by mercenaries from the Wagner Group, still do not control the entire city. “We hold on. We are fighting,” he settled.
On Saturday, Vladimir Putin congratulated the Wagner Group and the Russian Armed Forces for the capture of Bakhmut, a seizure that was led by the leader and owner of the mercenary group, Yevgeni Prigozhin. However, the Zelensky government has rejected this version and ensures that his troops are still defending the punished city located in the east of the country.
For his part, the commander of the Ukrainian Army, General Olexander Sirski, has acknowledged that they already only control a part of the outskirts of the strategic Bakhmut, but has stressed that the objective now is to achieve a “tactical siege” on the forces Russians present in the town. “Despite the fact that we now control the outskirts of the city, the importance of its defense does not lose meaning. This will give us the opportunity to enter the city in the future, when the operational situation on the front changes,” Sirski argued in a message posted on Telegram.
