Ukrainian artillery fires toward the front line during heavy fighting near Bakhmut, Ukraine [Source: Reuters]

Ukrainian troops have been forced to withdraw from some parts of Bakhmut in the face of a renewed Russian assault on the ruined battlefield city, Britain said, with Moscow pressing to achieve a victory before Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive.

Ukrainian officials say Russia has been drawing down troops from other areas on the front for a major push on Bakhmut, which Moscow has been trying to capture for nine months to reenergize the all-out invasion it launched more than a year ago.

Western countries have in the past pointed to acrimony between the Russian defence ministry (MoD) and the country’s main mercenary force Wagner as a major Russian weakness.

“Russia has re-energised its assault on the Donetsk Oblast town of Bakhmut as forces of the Russian MoD and Wagner Group have improved co-operation,” Britain’s military said in a daily briefing note.

“Ukrainian forces face significant resupply issues but have made orderly withdrawals from the positions they have been forced to concede,” it said.

Near Bakhmut, soldiers from a Ukrainian artillery unit were loading shells into a Soviet-era howitzer and firing towards the front line, where they said Russia had massed its foot soldiers.

“Our target in that direction is mostly infantry. There is a big concentration of the Russian Federation’s ‘human factor’,” said Dmytro, the artillery unit’s 44-year-old commander. The gun thundered as the unit blasted three shells, the first to find range, the second to adjust aim.

“The third one is finishing off. Most likely, I hope, the infantry they spotted was eliminated.”