CHASIV YAR, Ukraine—Ukrainian forces hung on to positions in the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut on Thursday, while Moscow said its security forces had battled Ukrainian saboteurs who had taken hostages in a cross-border raid.
Russia’s FSB security force said the situation was now “under control” in Bryansk Province just north of the Ukrainian border. Earlier Moscow had said armed Ukrainians had crossed the frontier, fired on a car killing one person and wounding a child, and held hostages in a shop.
In a brief television address, President Vladimir Putin said the attackers had fired deliberately on the car, knowing it held civilians.
“They won’t achieve anything. We will crush them,” he said, saying Russia was fighting “terrorists and neo-Nazis.”
Near the front lines west of Bakhmut, in the Ukrainian-held town of Chasiv Yar, the thump of outgoing artillery fire could be heard.
In nearby towns and villages, new trenches had been dug on the roadside 20–40 meters (65-130 feet) apart, an apparent sign that Ukrainian forces were strengthening defensive positions west of the city.
The boss of Russia’s Wagner private army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, released a video of his men waving a Wagner banner and musical instruments atop a ruined multi-storey building, which he said had been filmed near the center of Bakhmut. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the location.
Russian troops, bolstered by hundreds of thousands of reservists called up last year and thousands of convicts recruited by Wagner from prison, have been advancing north and south of the city to cut it off.
Moscow says taking Bakhmut would be a step towards seizing the rest of the surrounding Donbass region. Kyiv claims the city has limited strategic value but it is exhausting Russia’s invasion force in what has become the bloodiest battle of the war.
Cross-border Raid
The reported raid into the village of Lubechanye near the border in Russia’s Bryansk Province comes days after Moscow said Kyiv had attacked targets deep inside its territory with drones.In videos circulating online, armed men calling themselves the “Russian Volunteer Corps” said they had crossed the border to fight “the Kremlin regime.” Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage.
Zelenskyy aide Mykhailo Podolyak called the Russian reports of the incident “a classic deliberate provocation” he claimed in a tweet.
But he also implied an attack was under way, carried out by Russian partisans.
Russian missiles crashed into a five-story apartment block in the southern city of Zaporizhzia overnight, collapsing upper floors in the center of the building.
Police said at least four people had been killed.
