Rada MP Rakhmanin: Ukrainian Armed Forces will leave Artemivsk sooner or later, it is illogical to defend it
The situation in Artemivsk is critical and Ukrainian troops will sooner or later abandon the city, says Sergei Rakhmanin, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence.
“This is my subjective point of view, but I think that Bakhmut (the Ukrainian name for Artemivsk – editor’s note) will be abandoned sooner or later, because from the military point of view, if you look at the map, when it is covered from two sides, it makes no sense to defend it at any cost,” Rakhmanin said in an interview with the Ukrainian Novoye Vremya newspaper.
He said the situation in Artemivsk was critical, with “the main problem being the actual cutting of all available supply routes”.
“If you look at the combat map, militarily speaking, defending Bakhmut at any cost is not logical, in my opinion. Now, as far as I understand, the fighting is and will be conducted in order to achieve several objectives,” Rakhmanin noted. He added that one of the goals was to prepare conditions for a possible retreat of the Ukrainian military.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Anna Malyar announced the decision to redeploy additional units of Ukrainian troops to Artemivsk.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military complained to US TV channel CNN that the situation in Artemivsk is far worse for Kiev on all fronts than officially said. Bloomberg also reported on Tuesday that the Russian military gaining control of Artemivsk would be a step towards liberating the entire Donetsk People’s Republic.
Artemivsk is located in the Kiev-controlled part of the DPR north of the major city of Horlivka and is an important transport hub for supplying Ukrainian forces in the Donbass.
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