Day 362: February 20In the Bakhmut area, after the withdrawal from Paraskoviivka, the front line shifted towards the highway. Since the Ukrainians were no longer present in Paraskoviivka, this gave more freedom to the Russian assault units and allowed them to assault the northern outskirts of Bakhmut. After establishing control over several blocks, the Russians immediately opened another line of attack and started advancing along the railways – that is why some sources started circulating information that the Ukrainian defense collapsed and the Russians had already taken Berkhivka and Yahidne into a pocket. However, this is not true because there is simply no possibility for the Russians to maintain their presence in this region – they can only quickly slip through, conduct an attack and withdraw. Some sources also suggested that the Russians took control over the main Ukrainian defenses near Yahidne, which is the train station, however, even Russian sources are not in agreement with this development, and most refer to the outer region as a grey zone.Nonetheless, this doesn’t make the situation easy. The Russians are stretching the front line and fixing a lot of Ukrainian troops – they are attacking the train station, Yahidne, Bekhivka from two sides, and also Dubovo-Vasylivka. Right now, the fights are mainly taking place in the forest areas, where the Ukrainians established their positions. There are two ways to supply this prefrontal group: from Bakhmut and from Orikhovo-Vasylivka. Constant clashes likely made the center of this road unusable, so both ways are used to minimize the risks. So far, this method is working because, as reported by the Russians, the Ukrainians have successfully reinforced the line with several fresh battalions.The Russians are also facing a lot of challenges and constraints. First of all, their main axis of advance comes from the lowlands. The Ukrainians in Yahidne are located on the side of a hill and do not allow the Russians to attack in large groups. That is why, according to the soldiers on the ground, Russian assault units are quite small. They try to compensate for it with the number of attacks by launching several attacks on each settlement from multiple sides. So far, their attack on Yahidne has been successfully rebuffed from the hills; attacking Bekhivka in front is obviously a suicide operation, so they are trying to take control over the forest and the tree belts on the hills, so far unsuccessfully; and additional attacks to fix Ukrainian troops are also complicated by local geography, in particular dense tree areas on this hill.Due to the internal feud between Wagner forces and the Russian Ministry of Defense, Wagner forces lack the proper means of suppressing Ukrainian fire and conducting counterbattery operations. Several days ago, Wagner fighters published a video showing dozens of recently killed soldiers. They themselves said that Wagners are losing several hundred people every day due to inadequate supplies of ammunition.This is extremely important because Wagners have to storm three big hills in order to cut all supplies to Bakhmut and achieve operational encirclement. And if we check the weather, we can see that there are only 4 days left of relatively cold weather. After that, the temperature will skyrocket, and all the snow will melt and turn the fields into the mud. And as you can see from the map, absolutely all Russian lines of attacks imply that they need to cross the fields. Accumulated losses and bad weather will likely force the Russians to decrease the intensity of their attacks significantly.