Ukraine is determined to fight for the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office said Monday, rejecting reports of a partial withdrawal and discord over their plans.
The town has been fought over for months and if Russia takes control, some military analysts say a path to the major cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk would open up for Moscow's troops. They would then be closer to the complete conquest of the Donetsk region.
However, other experts say the encirclement of the cities is now impossible after Kremlin forces were ousted from the Kharkiv region to the north – and that the value of Bakhmut would merely be a symbolic morale boost for the Russians.
Zelenskyy said that at a meeting of top military officials, he had asked the commander of the regional grouping and Ukraine's commander in chief how they proposed to proceed.
"Both generals responded not to withdraw but to strengthen (our defenses)," he said in his nightly address.
"The command unanimously supported this position. There were no other positions. I told the commander in chief to find the appropriate forces to help our guys in Bakhmut."
Zelenskyy held a meeting with Commander in Chief Valerii Zaluzhny and the head of the Ukrainian land forces Oleksandr Syrskyi amid reports of a disagreement about the way forward.
According to Russian military bloggers, mercenary Wagner forces have taken parts of eastern, southern and northern Bakhmut, which had a population of 74,000 before the war but is now inhabited by just 5,000 civilians amid the ruins.
In its situation report on Monday, the Ukrainian general staff reported continued fighting in the area and there has been no verified confirmation of a pullback.
The destroyed town itself, as well as several suburbs, were shelled by the Russian side.
Russia also attacked other areas of Ukraine by air during the night, Ukrainian officials said, with 13 of 15 drones shot down.
"The drones had taken off from the north," Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said on television.
Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region, still under full Ukrainian control, was particularly hit.
"The rocket attacks overnight have destroyed a school and damaged 15 apartment buildings," city Mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko wrote on Facebook, adding that no one was killed nor injured.
Ukraine's leaders also reacted with horror to a video of an alleged shooting of a prisoner of war by Russian soldiers.
"War crimes are being cultivated in Russia," the head of the president's office, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram on Monday. It was an example of the Russians' weakness, he said.
"For each of these war crimes, there will be a punishment. No one can escape it," said Zelenskyy's confidant.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told journalists he was devastated after watching the video.
The Ukrainian parliament's human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, called the filmed alleged shooting an "expression of baseness and meanness."
The killing of prisoners is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, he stressed. He had sent the video to his international colleagues as evidence of "another war crime by Russia."
The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.
The video had been published by various media outlets such as the internet portal Ukrainska Pravda. In it, a man in Ukrainian uniform shouts "Glory to Ukraine" and is then presumably killed with several shots.
Videos have emerged in the past, which were difficult to verify, of Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoners. Moscow also criticized these as war crimes.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu meanwhile visited the occupied Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which was almost completely destroyed by Russian bombardments last year.
Shoigu checked the work of construction crews in Mariupol during his tour of the eastern Donetsk region, the Defense Ministry said.
In a video released by the ministry, Shoigu can be seen in a newly built military hospital and in front of the civil defense building.
He was also said to have received an update on the construction of a water pipeline from the southern Russian region of Rostov to Donetsk.
There has been growing criticism that those in charge of the war in Moscow were only running it from their offices and not paying attention to the concerns of the soldiers and the local population, whom Russia claims to have liberated from Kyiv.
Moscow said at the weekend that Shoigu had paid visits to front-line areas in Donetsk. A soundless video showed him alongside the chief of general staff and commander of the Russian troops in Ukraine, Valery Gerasimov, as well as his deputy Sergey Surovikin.
It was not possible to verify how close Shoigu was to the fighting.
The visit came amid reports of continued disputes between the mercenary force Wagner and Russia's Defense Ministry.
There were reports on Monday of an alleged threat by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to withdraw his unit fighting in front of Bakhmut and thus provoke a collapse of the front. These were however said to likely be older statements by the oligarch.
The threat is said to have been made at the height of the conflict a few weeks ago, when the mercenaries complained about insufficient ammunition supplies from the ministry.
Prigozhin confirmed on Monday however, on his press service's Telegram, that the dispute continues.
His representative was denied access to the general staff on Monday morning, he said. He did not, however, speak of withdrawing his units. "We will continue to destroy the Ukrainian forces at Bakhmut," he said.
