Russia-Ukraine war: Ukrainian ground forces commander visits Bakhmut

More than a year into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the heaviest fighting has been taking place in the key city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. In an effort to boost morale and discuss strategy, a Ukrainian ground forces commander visited Bakhmut to speak with Ukrainian units.

Ukraine’s ground forces Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, sought to boost morale over the weekend during a visit to Bakhmut. Syrskyi spoke with Ukrainian units which are holding the line in Bakhmut on strategy while also boosting their morale. Syrskyi has been deemed as the mastermind behind the defeat of Russian forces during their attempt to take Ukraine’s capital Kyiv at the early onset of the war and in Kharkiv in September.

Syrskyi has since been tasked to oversee the defense of Bakhmut and said that Ukrainian forces would hold the defense.

“A thoughtful system of engineering barriers, combined with a natural landscape, has turned the area into a true impregnable fortress at the walls of which not just a thousand of enemies had found death,” Syrskyi said early this month.

The Ground Forces said in a post on the Telegram messaging platform that during the visit to Bakhmut, Syrskyi “listened to the unit commanders tackling urgent problems, provided assistance in solving them, and supported the servicemen.”

Also, during the weekend, Ukrainian forces carried out several counter-attacks and fought off Russian forces around the town of Yahidne, following the Russian Wagner mercenary group’s claim that it had captured the village along with the village of Berkhivka.

On Monday, the United Nations Human Rights Council and Conference for Disarmament met for a session in Geneva where the war dominated the meeting, days after the UN General Assembly in New York overwhelmingly voted for Russia to leave Ukraine.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most massive violations of human rights we are living today,” said UN chief Antonio Guterres on the first day of what would be a record six-week session.

UN rights chief Volker Turk condemned the resurgence of “old destructive wars of aggression from a bygone era with worldwide consequences as we have witnessed again in Europe with the senseless Russian invasion of Ukraine.”