Bakhmut Again, Sebastopol Bomb Damage Assessment and Kadyrov

This morning, I woke up to excellent news. Mind you, this is via a Russian channel repeating Ukrainian channels. We may be heading to a breakthrough at this part of the front. Also, Russian forces have been moving reserves back and forth between Bakhmut and Zaporizhia. So without any further, this is the news:

Syrsky: the Russian defense near Bakhmut was broken through, in the battles for Andriivka and Kleshchiivka Russia lost three brigades

The commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Colonel General Alexander Syrsky, said that as a result of the battles for Andriivka and Kleshchiivka south of Bakhmut, the Russian defense line was broken and three Russian military brigades were defeated. His statement was distributed by the official Telegram channel Military Media Center.

“After the loss of the settlements of Andriivka and Kleshchiivka last week, the enemy is conducting numerous counterattacks from different directions, unsuccessfully trying to regain lost positions. After all, these small, at first glance, settlements were important elements of the enemy’s defensive line, which stretched from Bakhmut to Gorlovka,” Syrsky noted.

“As a result of the successful actions of our troops, the enemy’s defense line was broken, which he tried to close, throwing all available reserves into battle. In the battles in the Bakhmut direction, some of the most trained and best units of the enemy were defeated and completely lost their combat capability — the 72nd separate motorized rifle brigade, the 31st and 83rd separate air assault brigades.”

Syrsky speaks of the capture of Kleshchiivka as a fait accompli. He spoke about this yesterday, as did other official representatives of Ukraine, but the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine noted in the morning that some “assault actions” were still ongoing there. The Russian Ministry of Defense even today claimed that the attacks on Kleshchiivka were allegedly repelled.

Now, there is a psychological effect to this. Russia lost over 70 thousand troops taking this terrain. Evgeny Pryghozin said this would happen because of Russian forces’ poor supply and training.