A Ukrainian military official described the situation around the city of Bakhmut as “extremely tense” Tuesday, highlighting an area that has been subject to heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donetsk province.

“Despite taking significant losses, the enemy has dispatched its best-trained Wagner assault units to try to break through the defenses of our troops and surround the city," the commander of Ukraine's ground forces Oleksandr Syrskyi said on social media.

In his nightly address Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the situation in Bakhmut “is getting more and more complicated.”

He said Russian forces are "constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions."

Russia has been intensifying its attacks on several areas in eastern Ukraine, including Bakhmut. The ruined city once held about 75,000 people.

Reuters reported that Russian forces have made some progress from the north and south as they seek to encircle the city and cut off Ukrainian forces inside it.

NATO expansion

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that progress is being made toward ratifying the bids of Finland and Sweden to join the alliance and that both countries have lived up to agreements they made to address concerns raised by Turkey.

Only Turkey and Hungary have yet to give their final approval for the accessions of Finland and Sweden in a process that must be unanimous among NATO’s current members.

“I’m absolutely confident that both Finland and Sweden will become members of NATO,” Stoltenberg told reporters as he appeared alongside Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin in Helsinki. “The time is now to ratify both in Budapest and in Ankara.”

Turkey has expressed objections to Sweden, accusing the government of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara considers terror organizations.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday that Sweden has not lived up to its side of a June agreement in which Sweden and Finland pledged to lift restrictions on selling weapons to Turkey and to intensify work on Ankara's requests to extradite suspected militants.

Turkey, Sweden and Finland are due to resume talks about their NATO bids March 9 after Turkey halted the process in response to far-right protesters burning a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.

Marin said Tuesday the potential threat of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine last year prompted Finland to seek NATO membership, saying the NATO line “is the only line Russia wouldn’t cross.”

She said that while Finland and Sweden made the decision to apply for their own interests, it is also in the interest of NATO because the expansion would strengthen the defense of northern Europe. (KB/VOA)