Ukraine’s Armed Forces have reportedly taken control of one of Russia’s logistical routes on the Bakhmut front and are actively working to cut off the remaining routes, as stated by the spokesman for the Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces on Sunday.
“One of the roads that we can already target is the Bakhmut-Horlivka road, which is three kilometers from the contact line – this is the working distance for our mortars and UAVs,” Illia Yevlash, head of the press service for the Eastern Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said as cited by Ukrainian newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda.

Yevlash added: “Also, the Russians still have several logistic routes along which they supply their Bakhmut group, these are the routes leading from the occupied territory.”

“However, we are continuing to sever these routes now and will keep on doing so in order to cut off resources for the Russian group on this front and inflict the highest possible losses on it,” he stated.

Furthermore, the Washington-based think tank Institute of Study of War (ISW) wrote in an assessment that Ukraine’s forces’ pinning down of Russian troops in Bakhmut may be alleviating pressure on the Kupyansk frontline.

It said: “Ukrainian counteroffensive operations on Bakhmut’s southern flank have fixed a large amount of Russian combat power in Bakhmut that would otherwise be available to reinforce Russian defenses in the south — or, in this case, to attempt to force Ukrainian forces to redeploy to defend against Russian assaults around Kupyansk.”

Additionally, ISW state that “Ukraine’s simultaneous counteroffensives in Bakhmut and southern Ukraine are impeding Russia’s long-term force generation efforts as Russia redeploys its new reserves to defend against Ukrainian advances.”