Russian forces advance in Ukraine’s Bakhmut

Russian forces are moving forward in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut despite fierce resistance and have almost taken full control of a metals plant there, a Russian-installed leader in the region said.
His assertion ran counter to Ukrainian and Western descriptions of the situation in the city, which they have said is stabilising as a Russian offensive falters. Reuters has not been able to verify the battlefield situation.
The battle for Bakhmut, which Russia calls by its Soviet-era name of Artyomovsk, has for months been the grinding and bloody focal point of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, which it calls a “special military operation”.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader of the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region under Moscow’s control, said the bulk of Ukrainian forces had been forced to pull back from the AZOM metals factory on the western side of the Bakhmutka river.