MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. Ukraine is preparing new reserves to send to Artyomovsk, a town known in Ukraine as Bakhmut, despite the huge losses it suffers there every day, Yan Gagin, an adviser to interim head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin, said on Tuesday.
He said Ukrainian forces "send more and more troops there," despite their losses.
"Given the losses of the Ukrainian armed forces - it’s in the hundreds every day, hundreds of troops every day - it’s not entirely right to hold the town, I think. Things don’t look great for them at the moment," he said on Rossiya-24 television.
Nonetheless, Kiev is preparing new reserves.
"They are throwing reserves in there. They are preparing new reserves. They have now moved a new battalion there. But the question is how will they deploy it there on roads that are controlled by our artillery?" Gagin went on to say.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private military company, on Monday said Ukrainian troops will fight for Artyomovsk to the very end, as they have set up four groups to block Russian forces. Andrey Marochko, a retired lieutenant-colonel of the People’s Militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic, has also told TASS that Ukrainian commanders were reinforcing troops in Artyomovsk in a bid to prevent the town from being surrounded.
Artyomovsk is located in the Kiev-controlled part of the DPR and is an important transportation hub for supplying Ukrainian troops in Donbass. Fierce fighting has been raging for the town. Denis Pushilin, the interim head of the Donetsk People’s Republic said on February 16 that Russian forces had seized control of all key heights near Artyomovsk.