MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Kyiv’s position means Russia’s goals in Ukraine can only be achieved by military force, Russian state news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
“We have to achieve our goals. Right now this is only possible by military means due to the current position of the Kyiv regime,” Peskov said.
Russia claims it is fighting in Ukraine to “liberate” Russian speakers in the eastern Donbas from what it has called a neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.
Ukraine and the West say this is a baseless pretext put forward to justify a war of aggression and Moscow’s attempts to seize swathes of Ukrainian land.
Moscow has blamed Kyiv for a breakdown in talks about a ceasefire, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will only consider peace settlements after Russian troops leave Ukrainian territory.
Bakhmut has become the focus of the war, with the months-long fight becoming Europe’s bloodiest infantry battle since World War Two.
“It is very tough in the east - very painful,” Zelensky said in his overnight video address, held nightly since Russia launched its invasion more than a year ago.
Kyiv and Moscow gave differing accounts of negotiations to extend the Black Sea grain deal, established last year to prevent global famine by securing wartime exports from Ukraine and Russia, both among the world’s top suppliers of food.
The arrangement, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, is due to expire this week. Russia said it had been extended for 60 days, but Ukraine said the agreement required any extension to last 120 days. Turkey said talks were still ongoing.
On the battlefront, Ukrainian soldiers said they were repelling attacks near Kreminna, north of Bakhmut.
Trench warfare, described by both sides as a meat grinder, has claimed a huge toll in Bakhmut, with both sides reporting hundreds of enemy troops killed each day. Neither side gives regular figures of its own casualties.
Russia says taking Bakhmut would open a path to capture all of surrounding Donetsk province, a central war aim. Ukraine, which has decided to defend Bakhmut rather than withdraw, says wearing out Russia’s military there now will help its counter-offensive later.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday that Moscow was running short of ammunition, “to the extent that extremely punitive shell-rationing is in force on many parts of the front”.
Ukraine was suffering losses among reserves it intended to use for a later push against Russian forces, Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in an interview. “We could lose here everything we wanted to use for those counter-offensives.”