Russia-Ukraine war live: Ukrainian defence of Bakhmut ‘under severe pressure’ as Russian forces close in | Ukraine

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, paid a rare visit to Russia’s forces in Ukraine.

In a statement published on Telegram, the country’s defence ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the South Donetsk direction”.

In video published by the ministry, Shoigu is seen awarding medals to Russian military personnel and touring a ruined town with the district’s commander, Col Gen Rustam Muradov.

Russia’s top military chiefs have visited the frontline in Ukraine only sparingly since Russia invaded the country a year ago.

Shoigu, who has served as defence minister since 2012, has come under harsh criticism of his performance during the war from pro-war advocates, with Wagner Group mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin last month accusing him and others of “treason”.

Ukrainian resupply routes out of the besieged city of Bakhmut are becoming “increasingly limited”, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

In its latest intelligence update, the MoD tweeted that Kyiv is “reinforcing the area with elite units” and destroying key bridges, but Russian forces are making further advances.

“The Ukrainian defence of the Donbas town of Bakhmut is under increasingly severe pressure, with intense fighting taking place in and around the city,” the MoD said.

“Regular Russian Army and Wagner Group forces have made further advances into the northern suburbs of the city, which is now a Ukrainian-held salient, vulnerable to Russian attacks on three sides.

“Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, and within the last 36 hours two key bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed, including a vital bridge connecting the city to the last main supply route from Bakhmut to the city of Chasiv Yar.

“Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the town are increasingly limited.”

Russian artillery is pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city in the east of Ukraine.

Reuters observed intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the city.

A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was damaged by Russian tank shelling.

Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline in a sign that Ukraine was not yet ready to give up the city.

To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.

The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, visited Bakhmut on Friday for briefings with local commanders on how to boost the defence capacity of frontline forces.

Denys Yaroslavskyi, a commander of a Ukrainian army unit in Bakhmut, told Espreso TV that parts of some units had been ordered to rotate to more secured positions, describing the situation on Friday as “a slaughterhouse on both sides”.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had earlier said the city was almost completely surrounded with only one road still open for Ukraine’s troops.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Our top story this morning:

There have been reports of intense Russian shelling of routes leading west out of Bakhmut, in an apparent attempt to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out of the besieged city.

A bridge in the adjacent town of Khromove was also damaged by Russian tank shelling.

But in a sign that Kyiv was not yet ready to give up Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers were working to repair damaged roads and more troops were heading toward the frontline. To the west, Ukrainians were digging new trenches for defensive positions.

More on this story soon. Here are the other key recent developments:

• Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.

• The US president, Joe Biden, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, met at the White House on Friday, where both leaders praised each other’s country’s support towards Ukraine. “As Nato allies, we’re making the alliance stronger and more capable,” Biden said. Scholz told Biden that it was important that the US and Germany organised in “lockstep” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.

• The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, made an unannounced trip to Ukraine on Friday, according to Department of Justice officials. Garland had traveled to the western city of Lviv on an invitation from the Ukrainian prosecutor general, USA Today reported officials saying.

• Serbia has denied that it has supplied weapons to Ukraine, its foreign minister said. Following Moscow’s demand on Thursday to know whether Serbia provided thousands of rockets to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Ivica Dačić said that zero weapons have been exported from the country to any parties involved in the “conflict”.

• The US has announced a new military aid package of ammunition and other support for Ukraine worth $400m. The package will be funded using presidential drawdown authority, which authorises the president to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.

• Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has said he is confident that western countries will supply fighter jets to Kyiv, and that he is optimistic that the war will end this year. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Reznikov said Ukraine expects to receive “two to three different types” of fighter jets and that he believed it would be “done through a kind of coalition again”, referring to the “tank coalition” of Leopard 2 tanks from western allies.