Mykhailo Podolyak, the Adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, has said in an interview with Italian TV channel Rai 1 that Ukraine’s Armed Forces have been carrying out a counteroffensive “for several days”.
“For several days now, the counteroffensive has been happening, there’s an intense war on 1,500 km of the border, but the action has already started,” Podolyak stated.
On 15 May, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander of the Ground Forces of the Ukrainian military, called the advance of Ukrainian troops in the Bakhmut direction “the first success in the offensive of the Bakhmut defence operation”.
Furthermore, Hanna Maliar, the deputy Defence Minister of Ukraine noted that the Ukrainian troops had been “managing to make advances” for several days straight.
The US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported in its bulletin dated 19 May that the Ukrainian forces had taken tactical initiative and achieved significant successes in Bakhmut during their counteroffensive operations on 18 May. The experts noted that these efforts had come as a continuation of the counterstrikes that the Ukrainian forces had been conducting for several days then.
On 20 May, the founder of PMC Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin announced the complete capture of Bakhmut. The Ukrainian authorities have not officially confirmed the surrender of the city. According to Maliar’s statement on 20 May, the Ukrainian troops were still holding the line in the Samolet district of the city.
