Ukraine won't surrender Bakhmut, says Zelensky as Russia advances near…. That promise lasted one month. Limited shelf life. Russia’s long grind to take the strategically vital city of Bakhmut is nearing it ends, with the clean up and capture of abandoned Ukrainian units still inside the city as the priority tasks for the Russian military. Bakhmut is not as economically important as Mariupol, which fell to the Russians last May, but it is geographically significant. That is why Ukraine fought so desperately to hang on to it and expended the lives of tens of thousands of its soldiers in a...