| Ukraine’s bloody stand for Bakhmut |
| For 10 months, Russian and Ukrainian forces have battled for Bakhmut, a 16-square-mile city that has been the site of some of the fiercest urban combat in Europe since World War II. Ukrainian forces are now defending a shrinking half-circle of ruins that is only about 20 blocks wide and continually pounded with artillery fire. |
| A visit this week to the remaining, battered zone of control, along with interviews with soldiers and commanders, showed that Ukraine had lost ground inside the city, although an access road remained passable, allowing resupply and evacuation of the wounded. |
| Pushed into this ever-smaller corner, the Ukrainian army is determined to hunker down and hold out, even as allies have quietly questioned the rationale for fighting block by block in a devastated city that is close to being encircled, according to recently leaked U.S. intelligence documents. |
| Strategy: In Kyiv’s assessment, holding out in these grim conditions is a strategic imperative, to bog down the Russian Army while Ukraine rearms and retrains its own military for a coming counteroffensive. |
| In other news from the war: |
| A Russian fighter jet fired a missile at a British aircraft in September, but the missile malfunctioned, according to a leaked intelligence report. The incident was far more serious than originally portrayed and could have amounted to an act of war.Poland’s prime minister said he believed that only direct U.S. intervention would lead South Korea to make its artillery shells available to Ukraine.The basketball star Brittney Griner is working on a memoir about her nearly 10 months behind bars in Russia. |
