https://southfront.org/hundreds-of-civilians-held-in-bakhmut/

Transcript:
Residents of Bakhmut should immediately leave the city due to heavy fighting in residential buildings, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Vereshchuk wrote on her telegram channel.

According to the Ukrainian official, just in the last day five civilians were killed. In total about 6 thousand civilians remained in the city, according to the Ukrainian side.

Vereshchuk added that “adequate, law-abiding and patriotic” residents of Bakhmut should leave their homes, apparently other civilians may remain in the war-torn city. According to the Ukrainian official, being in the city threatens the lives of the civilians themselves and creates an additional obstacle for the operations of the Ukrainian military.

“To be honest, I am surprised that they are still there.”, — she wrote.

Indeed, it is surprising why the Ukrainian side did not bother to evacuate all civilians in advance.

In fact, the answer is simple. The Ukrainian military uses civilians in the city as a human shield.

The Kiev regime did not take people out of the cities a year ago, when it hysterically predicted the beginning of the Russian offensive, nor after Moscow recognized the DPR and the LPR, when the beginning of Russian military operations was obvious. It turned out that thousands of people were not evacuated from Bakhmut before the fighting on the streets of the city broke out and now, when the city is in a tactical encirclement, Kiev is not engaged in their rescue.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine did not even make her appeal on public channels, such as television or radio, but only published it in her personal telegram channel, where it is unlikely to be noticed by any civilian in the war-torn city.

The reason is that the Kiev regime is yet hiding its defeat and crimes in Bakhmut and the security of thousands of civilians is not a worthy reason to officially acknowledge them.

In their turn, the Wagner fighters continue to evacuate civilians from the war-torn districts as far as possible. One of the Russian fighters claimed in his interview, that they evacuate civilians almost every night, including children and elderly people. “There are still civilians in the city,” the fighter claimed, noting that Ukrainian forces do not allow them to leave the city.

Earlier, photos of leaflets, which Ukrainian soldiers reportedly hung on the streets of Bakhmut, were spread online. They read that several residential buildings will be burned to create a smoke screen in order to slow down the advance of Russian troops in the city.

The head of Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin did not confirm that he was aware of these leaflets. He also noted that the smoke screen can lead to certain difficulties. However, they will not critically hinder the overall Russian advance.

Prigozhin assured that “Time will tell”.