Ukrainian Forces Outnumbered And Facing Supply Issues In Battle for Bakhmut

Ukraine has said its forces are outnumbered by Russian troops and face dwindling ammunition in the battle for Bakhmut, the city in the Donetsk region believed to be the most contested patch of ground in the war at the moment.

A Ukrainian commander told CNN that his troops faced a Russian barrage from early morning until night, but the biggest problem for Kyiv's forces was that they were "heavily outnumbered."

Battery commanders at the frontline told the network that ammunition supplies are running low and that even U.S.-supplied guns are "breaking" under the constant strain, and that they needed more weapons and munitions to fight.

It comes as an assessment from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russian forces were making "incremental gains" around Bakhmut as they conducted offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area.

Before the war, Bakhmut had a population of 70,000 and was renowned for its salt mine and as a transportation hub.

Since the spring, the city has become part of Ukraine's front-line defense. The Russian army has continued its assault on the city of Bakhmut in a battle akin to World War I trench warfare.

On Thursday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian army reported yet another day of artillery and tank bombardment and shelling reported in more than two dozen different settlements nearby.

The U.S. think tank said on Wednesday that even if Russian troops continue their advance towards Bakhmut and force a Ukrainian withdrawal it would offer them "little operational benefit."

Russian offensives in the area are "consuming a significant proportion of Russia's available combat power" which could enable Ukrainian counter offensives elsewhere, it added.

"What is interesting is that from the Ukrainian perspective they are able to fix large elements of Russia's effort in one place," former British military intelligence officer Philip Ingram said, which Kyiv's forces exploited in their successful counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson.

He said the fighting in Bakhmut "has almost become an accidental main effort for Russia" because its forces believed they could potentially break through the Ukrainian lines.

"Bakhmut is the potential pivot point for the next stage of the conflict," he told Newsweek. "Russia's numerical superiority shows that numbers are not the primary metric in military operations."

He believed that if Ukraine did not throw formations to repel the Russians but just continued to fix them, then the next Ukrainian counter offensive could be somewhere else.

But this could change if Ukraine "judges that Russia is sufficiently weak that an attack through the area could cause the complete collapse of the Russian defenses throughout the occupied territory," he said. "Ukraine still retains the initiative."

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.