Ukraine live briefing: Ukrainian forces advance near Bakhmut, officials say

The fight for Bakhmut has dragged out since last year, leading to mass casualties on both sides. Capturing the war-battered city would be a symbolic victory for Russia, its first such territorial gain since the summer. Ukraine sees holding Bakhmut as essential to preventing further Russian advances.

Russian authorities controlling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine are preparing to evacuate more than 3,000 staff members and families from the facility and surrounding areas, Ukraine’s energy provider, Energoatom, said Wednesday. News of the plan was first reported by The Washington Post on Monday.

Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

Ukrainian advance

• Despite Russian efforts in Bakhmut, “the enemy was still unable to capture the Ukrainian city,” Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s ground forces commander, said in a statement Wednesday. A Ukrainian assault brigade posted on Telegram that Russia’s 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade had escaped from the city. The Washington Post could not verify the claim. In a video shared on social media, Andriy Biletsky, commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, said his forces helped defeat units from Russia’s 72nd Brigade, leaving two companies “completely destroyed.” A squad of Wagner fighters also “lost a lot,” he said.
• Syrsky said that in some parts of the front line, Russian forces “could not resist the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers.”
• The Ukrainian assault “exhausted” Wagner troops, Syrsky said, “and forced them to be replaced in certain directions by less-well-prepared units of the Russian regular troops, which were defeated and left.”
• Prigozhin, the Wagner Group chief, has lashed out at Russian military leaders, accusing their soldiers of fleeing the battlefield and causing hundreds of casualties among Wagner fighters. He has threatened to pull his fighters because of weapons and ammunition shortages. On Wednesday, he said on Telegram that Wagner “continues the offensive in Bakhmut and is awaiting a decision on the issuance of ammunition and weapons in the required quantity.”

More key developments

• An evacuation from the Zaporizhzhia plant would leave a “catastrophic lack of skilled personnel,” Energoatom said in a Telegram post. Previously, many of the workers were “prohibited from leaving the town by the Russians,” it said. The plant pullout is part of the occupying Russian authorities’ effort to evacuate civilians ahead of a potential Ukrainian offensive in the south.
• The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that two drones detonated over a residential area on Wednesday, damaging two houses. Another drone was shot down by air defenses, he said on Telegram, adding that there were no casualties. He had reported more shelling in the region, on Russia’s border with Ukraine, on Monday.
• In Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly promised continued support for Ukraine regardless of the outcome of Kyiv’s anticipated counteroffensive. Noting that “the Ukrainians have consistently outperformed expectations, but there can be no guarantees in war,” Cleverly said the aid should continue “irrespective of whether this forthcoming offensive generates huge gains on the battlefield.” Ukrainian officials worry that the operation, which is expected to start in the coming weeks, could fall short of Western expectations and jeopardize future aid.
• Blinken and Cleverly also urged Russia to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal that has allowed Kyiv to export grain through the Black Sea despite the war. Cleverly exhorted Russia to “re-sign the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and do so immediately,” and Blinken repeated accusations that Russia is using hunger as a weapon. When the deal was last up for a 120-day renewal, on March 18, Russia agreed to extend it for only 60 days. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the Russian position on the deal was “well known” and “consistent.”
• The French judiciary opened a war crimes investigation into the death of Arman Soldin, 32, a journalist for Agence France-Presse, who was killed close to the front lines in Bakhmut on Tuesday. In a Wednesday statement, the French justice ministry said the investigation would be handled by France’s Central Office for Combating Core International Crimes and Hate Crimes. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that “all we can do is express our regret,” adding without elaborating that it was “necessary to look into the circumstances of the death of this journalist.”

Global impact

• Japan is in talks to open a NATO liaison office, the first in Asia, its foreign minister said. Yoshimasa Hayashi told CNN on Wednesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the world less stable. “We are already in discussions, but no details [have been] finalized yet,” he said.
• France is calling on the European Union to label the Wagner Group a “terrorist organization.” The French Parliament adopted the nonbinding resolution with support across the political spectrum, France 24 reported. Similar measures are underway in Britain, according to local media reports.
• The United States announced a fresh $1.2 billion military assistance package for Ukraine. It includes air defense systems and munitions, 155mm artillery rounds, commercial satellite imagery services and more training support, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Battleground updates

• Russia’s Victory Day military parade revealed “materiel and strategic communications challenges,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said in a daily update on Wednesday. Most of the 8,000 personnel in the parade in Moscow’s Red Square were “auxiliary, paramilitary forces, and cadets from military training establishments,” it said, adding that “a vintage T-34 from a ceremonial unit was the sole tank on parade.”
• Russia said two Ukrainian drones attempted to attack a military training facility overnight in its southwestern Voronezh region. “As a result of response actions, one of them deviated from its course and fell while another one was eliminated by fire,” regional governor Alexander Gusev said on Telegram, according to the Tass news agency.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared his country’s fight against Russia to the battle against Nazism, after Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Victory Day speech described his invasion of Ukraine as a part of a “real war” being waged against Russia. Zelensky said in his nightly address that it is “only a matter of time before the current aggressor loses, like the aggressor who lost 78 years ago, before Russian revanchism is crushed by the bravery of our warriors and the joint power of the free world.”

From our correspondents

U.S. says it has disabled major Russian cyberespionage operation: Federal law enforcement officials have hacked and disabled a complex Russian cyberespionage operation that had been used to steal sensitive material from the United States and its allies for about 20 years, The Post’s Perry Stein reports. Officials said they had been looking at the network for almost as long as it was online but executed a search warrant only this week.

“Through a high-tech operation that turned Russian malware against itself, U.S. law enforcement has neutralized one of Russia’s most sophisticated cyberespionage tools, used for two decades to advance Russia’s authoritarian objectives,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a news release.

Hrabchuk reported from Kyiv, Jeong from Seoul, Suliman from London, and Shammas and Westfall from Washington. Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.