MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. The Ukrainian combat group in Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine) in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has been almost sealed off and has no possibility to retreat, Yan Gagin, adviser to the acting DPR head, said on Thursday.
"The enemy has been edged out to the western outskirts of Artyomovsk and fierce battles are now raging there. The Ukrainian combat group itself has now been blockaded, almost sealed off," he said in a live broadcast on the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.
At the present moment, the Ukrainian military "has no possibility to retreat along these roads" because all of them are "practically controlled" by Russian artillery, he specified.
The Ukrainian military’s attempts to deliver food and ammunition to its troops and rotate the personnel currently fighting in Artyomovsk are doomed to fail, although such attempts are made regularly, he said.
Kiev’s counteroffensive may fail due to insufficient reserves, the absence of the equipment announced for its delivery, and also due to the preparedness of Russian forces, he said.
"The enemy combat group in Artyomovsk is deprived of its logistic support. Actually speaking, the enemy now faces the choice, as I said before: either [cargo] 200 [the codename for military fatalities] or captivity," he said.
Artyomovsk is located on the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic and is a major transportation hub for the Ukrainian army’s supplies in Donbass. Fierce fighting for the city is underway. Wagner private military company founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on April 12 that over 80% of Artyomovsk, including all administrative centers, was under the Russian troop control.