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By James Oliphant and Gram Slattery KEOSAUQUA, Iowa In coffee shops and churches, on farms and front porches,

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Watching imagery from a drone camera overhead, Ukrainian battalion commander Oleg Shiryaev warned his men in nearby trenches that Russian forces were advancing across a field toward a patch of trees outside the city of Bakhmut. The leader of the 228th Battalion of the 127th Kharkiv Territorial Defense Brigade then ordered a mortar team to get ready. A target was locked. A mortar tube popped out a loud orange blast, and an explosion cut a new crater in an already pockmarked hillside. “We are moving forward,” Shiryaev said after at least one drone image showed a Russian fighter struck down. “We fight for every tree, every trench, every dugout." Russian forces declared victory in the eastern city last month after the longest, deadliest battle since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 15 months ago. But Ukrainian defenders like Shiryaev aren't retreating. Instead, they are keeping up the pressure and continuing the fight from positions on the western fringes of Bakhmut. The pushback gives commanders in Moscow another thing to think about ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that appears to be taking shape. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russia sought to create the impression of calm around Bakhmut, but in fact, artillery shelling still goes on at levels similar to those at the height of the battle to take the city. The fight, she said, is evolving into a new phase. “The battle for the Bakhmut area hasn't stopped; it is ongoing, just taking different forms,” said Maliar, dressed in her characteristic fatigues in an interview from a military media center in Kyiv. Russian forces are now trying — but failing — to oust Ukrainian fighters from the “dominant heights” overlooking Bakhmut. “We are holding them very firmly,” she said. From the Kremlin's perspective, the area around Bakhmut is just part of the more than 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) front line that the Russian military must hold. That task could be made more difficult by the withdrawal of the mercenaries from private military contractor Wagner Group who helped take control of the city. They will be replaced with Russian soldiers. For Ukrainian forces, recent work has been opportunistic — trying to wrest small gains from the enemy and taking strategic positions, notably from two flanks on the northwest and southwest, where the Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade has been active, officials said. Russia had envisioned the capture of Bakhmut as partial fulfillment of its ambition to seize control of the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Now, its forces have been compelled to regroup, rotate fighters and rearm just to hold the city. Wagner’s owner announced a pullout after acknowledging the loss of more than 20,000 of his men. Maliar described the nine-month struggle against Wagner forces in nearly existential terms: “If they had not been destroyed during the defense of Bakhmut, one can imagine that all these tens of thousands would have advanced deeper into Ukrainian territory.” The fate of Bakhmut, which lays largely in ruins, has been overshadowed in recent days by near-nightly attacks on Kyiv, a series of unclaimed drone strikes near Moscow and the growing anticipation that Ukraine's government will try to regain ground. But the battle for the city could still have a lingering impact. Moscow has made the most of its capture, epitomized by triumphalism in Russian media. Any slippage of Russia’s grip would be a political embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin. Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. research group, noted in a podcast this week that the victory brings new challenges in holding Bakhmut. With Wagner fighters withdrawing, Russian forces are “going to be increasingly fixed to Bakhmut ... and will find it difficult to defend,” Kofman told “War on the Rocks" in an interview posted Tuesday. “And so they may not hold on to Bakhmut, and the whole thing may have ended up being for nothing for them down the line,” he added. A Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Russian airborne forces are heavily involved in replacing the departing Wagner troops — a step that is "likely to antagonize” the airborne leadership, who see the duty as a further erosion of their “previously elite status" in the military. Ukrainian forces have clawed back slivers of territory on the flanks — a few hundred meters (yards) per day — to solidify defensive lines and seek opportunities to retake some urban parts of the city, said one Ukrainian analyst. “The goal in Bakhmut is not Bakhmut itself, which has been turned into ruins,” military analyst Roman Svitan said by phone. The goal for the Ukrainians is to hold on to the western heights and maintain a defensive arc outside the city. More broadly, Ukraine wants to weigh down Russian forces and capture the initiative ahead of the counteroffensive — part of what military analysts call “shaping operations” to set the terms of the battle environment and put an enemy in a defensive, reactive posture. Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east, said the strategic goal in the Bakhmut area was “to restrain the enemy and destroy as much personnel and equipment as possible” while preventing a Russian breakthrough or outflanking maneuver. Analyst Mathieu Boulègue questioned whether Bakhmut would hold lessons or importance for the war ahead. Military superiority matters, he said, but so does “information superiority” — the ability “to create subterfuge, to create obfuscation of your force, to be able to move in the shadows." Boulègue, a consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London, said those tactics “could determine which side gains an advantage that catches the other side by surprise, and turns the tide of the war.” Keaten reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report. Read More Russia-Ukraine war – latest: ‘Mutinies likely’ in Putin’s military as Zelensky prepares counteroffensive Protesters back on the streets of Belgrade as president ignores calls to stand down Turkey's Erdogan set to take oath for 3rd term in office, announce new Cabinet lineup Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide

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Britain’s military chief has defended Ukraine’s counteroffensive and said its troops “continue to hold the initiative” amid criticism that the pushback against the Russian invasion is moving slowly. The comments have also come as the war-hit nation’s deputy defence minister on Thursday said “good news” had emerged in the eastern front of the battlefield. “In the north, they are holding and fixing Russian forces there and in the south they are making progress between 10km and 20km, depending on how you judge it,” Sir Tony Radakin was quoted as saying by The Guardian at the DSEI arms fair in London. “The idea that war is neat and tidy, and you can plan and predict it to the nth degree is nonsense,” said Britain’s most senior military officer. He said progress of the counteroffensive could not be measured by a predictable timetable and warned the UK is vulnerable to a potential missile or drone attack as he pushed for a further discussion on improving homeland security. There is an “aggressive world out there in terms of state threats”, he said, pointing out it is now easy to “get close to a country and fly drones in”. British armed forces were “having a bigger conversation about homeland defences”, the chief of the defence staff said and asked whether within that “we need to have a conversation about integrated missile defence”. Admiral Radakin has been closely monitoring the war with communication lines to Ukraine’s most senior military commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The comments come a week after Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg shot back at recent criticism of “slow” counteroffensive from Ukrainian troops as he pointed out the numbers of mines in the battlefield Ukraine is encountering are at a historic high. “The starting point is that the Russian army used to be the second strongest in the world. And now the Russian army is the second strongest in Ukraine. That’s quite impressive by Ukrainians,” he said. “No one ever said that this was going to be easy,” Mr Stoltenberg told lawmakers at the European parliament earlier this month. “Hardly any time in history we have seen more mines on the battlefield than we are seeing in Ukraine today. So it was obvious that this was going to be extremely difficult. “The Ukrainians are gradually gaining ground. They have been able to breach the defensive lines of the Russian forces, and they are moving forward,” he said. Ukrainian officials said the war being fought in the country is unlike any other, as its air space has not been shut down and it does not have top-tier warplanes like F-16s. Last month, several US and other Western officials suggested the grinding war’s counteroffensive stage was falling short of expectations – but did not choose to be quoted on their claims. Some officials pointed holes in Ukraine’s strategy and blamed it for concentrating its forces in the wrong places. The counteroffensive has been backed by billions of dollars’ worth of Western military equipment. Read More Just 14 UK tanks for Ukraine? We must do better than that Sunak says Russian leader ‘doesn’t want to be held accountable’ at G20 US sends Ukraine controversial depleted uranium weapons that can pierce tank armour Zelensky needed to sack his defence minister – but it goes beyond just corruption scandals From Challenger to Leopard: How Ukraine’s tanks compare to Russia’s