Ukrainian forces seek to evacute Bakhmut’s last remaining children and elderly before Russia seizes control of the city (Picture: Getty)
A race is on in the besieged city of Bakhmut to evacuate the area’s last remaining children before Russian forces close in.
Pressure from Russian forces mounted on Ukrainians hunkered down in Bakhmut, as residents attempted to flee with help from troops ahead of an upcoming withdrawal from the key eastern stronghold.
Bakhmut has for months been a prime target of Moscow’s grinding eastern offensive in the war, with Russian troops, including forces from the private Wagner Group, inching ever closer.
Yet after months of bloody battles ,Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin announced on Telegram that his mercenaries have finally managed to gain control of the city, and look set to hand Putin his first major military victory in many months.
Russia looks to be on the verge of capturing Bakhmut after waging a bloody months-long battle (Picture: Reuters)
‘Only one road is left (open to Ukrainian forces),’ Prigozhin said. ‘The pincers are getting tighter.’
A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons said it was now too dangerous for civilians to leave Bakhmut by vehicle and that people had to flee on foot instead.
Civilians spoke about daily struggles as the fighting raged on nearly nonstop, reducing much of Bakhmut to rubble. Husband and wife Hennadiy Mazepa and Natalia Ishkova, who chose to remain in the city, said they lack food and basic utilities.
‘Humanitarian (aid) is given to us only once a month. There is no electricity, no water, no gas,’ Ishkova said.
‘I pray to God that all who remain here will survive,’ she added.
A police evacuation group named The White Angels are now scouring the lethal areas of the ruined city in an attempt to evacuate children and the elderly.
Speaking to the Observer, a member of the group speaks of the difficulty they face in trying to convince the remaining families to leave the are following rumours they will forcibly separate families from their children.
Police groups have been seeking to build rapport with families to allow them to safely evacuate thir children (Picture: Getty)
‘There have been cases of people hiding children because they’ve heard rumours that the police will take their children by force,’ says Oleksandra Havrylko, a 30-year-old police major who spent time in Bakhmut with The White Angels.
‘But it’s not correct. The law says we can only take children with permission of the parents. If the children don’t have parents but have a guardian, we can get permission from social services to take them out.’
Instead, she says, the group attempt to convince the families to leave of their own accord by building a rapport with them over several visits.
‘There was a family who said they didn’t have any money to leave or to rent somewhere’, she told the publication. ‘There was a seven-year-old child with them.
‘The grandfather wanted to evacuate but the mother didn’t. So, two weeks ago we found an apartment in advance and we photographed it to show them the pictures. And we said “look, this is where you’ll be going”.’
Moscow has been accused of abducting large numbers of children from captured territories and shipping them back to Russia, in what Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba labelled ‘the largest instance of state-sponsored kidnapping of children in modern history’.
Estimates of the number of Ukrainian children deported to Russia range from 13,000 to 307,000 without any indication as to when they could return to their home cities.
Russia has abducted thousands of children from Ukraine since the start of the war, which consitutues a genocide under international law (Picture: Getty)
Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, forcibly removing children from one group to another in an attempt to depopulate a a national, ethnic, racial or religious group is considered a form of genocide.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late on Friday that Kyiv’s actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city. It said Ukrainian troops may ‘conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,’ while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.
Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press toward other Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region.
But Ukraine is not giving up. The commander of Kyiv’s eastern group of soldiers, Oleksandr Syrsky, visited troops in Bakhmut this afternoon, according to a Telegram post by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
However, Ukrainian troops are still fighting in the city and are not prepared to abandon it yet (Picture: Getty)
‘The enemy does not give up hope of capturing Bakhmut and continues to accumulate forces to occupy the city,’ the ministry said.
‘Intense fighting is taking place in and around the city itself.’
Ukrainian soldier Eugene Cherepnya, who is in Bakhmut with the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, agreed.
‘Friends, at the moment there is no withdrawal of troops from Bakhmut,” Cherepnya tweeted today.
‘Fighting continues in all areas of the city, 93 stands and continues to perform the tasks assigned to it.
‘The situation is actually complicated, but trust only official sources and do not panic.’