Stuck at his home in Kyiv, Mykhailo Revenko listened to the sound of loud explosions. It was March 2022. Russian troops were on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, their tanks on the move. The fate of his country hung in the balance.

“There was a curfew. My job had stopped. I suddenly had a lot of time. I didn’t want to watch movies so I pulled a book from the shelf,” Revenko said. A native Russian speaker, he decided to improve his Ukrainian. “I went to a Ukrainian school and knew the language. But I needed to work on my vocabulary,” he said.

Revenko started with The Hunters and the Hunted, a 1944 novel by the dissident and anti-Soviet Ukrainian writer Ivan Bahrianyi. He then read Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front in a Ukrainian edition, as well as a translated work by the Swedish author Fredrik Backman.

Next he devoured Footprints on the Road by Valerii Markus, a Ukrainian soldier and popular blogger. Markus’s bestselling novel draws on his experiences fighting in the Donbas region in 2014, after Vladimir Putin kickstarted a war in the east, and sent special forces to take over Crimea.

Intense fighting continues in and around the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut as Kyiv and Moscow seemingly struggle with ammunition shortages and mounting casualties.

The head of the mercenary Wagner group, which is leading the Russian offensive in Bakhmut, claimed in a video published on Saturday that if his men were forced to withdraw, it could lead to the collapse of the entire Russian frontline.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, discussed the situation with senior commanders, and two top generals supported continuing to defend the eastern city against Russian forces, Zelenskiy’s office said on Monday.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, “spoke in favour of continuing the defensive operation and further strengthening [Ukrainian] positions in Bakhmut”, it said in a statement on its website.

Thousands of people have been killed and injured in the battle and videos from the city in the past week show many buildings charred, collapsed or without windows.

The few thousand civilians still there have been confined to living in basements for months with no running water, electricity or gas.

The Associated Press reported:

Over the bitterly cold winter months, the fighting has largely been deadlocked. Bakhmut does not have any major strategic value, and analysts say its possible fall is unlikely to bring a turning point in the conflict.

The city’s importance has become psychological – for Russian president Vladimir Putin, a victory there will finally deliver some good news from the battlefield, while for Kyiv the display of grit and defiance reinforces a message that Ukraine is holding on after a year of brutal attacks to cement support among its western allies.

Even so, some analysts questioned the wisdom of the Ukrainian defenders holding out much longer, with others suggesting a tactical withdrawal may already be under way.

Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at the CAN thinktank in Arlington, Virginia, said that Ukraine’s defence of Bakhmut has been effective because it has drained the Russian war effort, but that Kyiv should now look ahead.

“I think the tenacious defence of Bakhmut achieved a great deal, expending Russian manpower and ammunition,” Mr Kofman tweeted.

“But strategies can reach points of diminishing returns, and given Ukraine is trying to husband resources for an offensive, it could impede the success of a more important operation.”

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based thinktank, noted that urban warfare favours the defender but considered that the smartest option now for Kyiv may be to withdraw to positions that are easier to defend.

• Ukrainian forces appear to be conducting a “limited fighting withdrawal” in eastern Bakhmut but continue to inflict high casualties on the advancing Russian forces, the US-based Institute for the Study of War says in its latest update.

• The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has paid tribute to fighters in the Donbas, as his forces come under increasingly intense pressure in the city of Bakhmut. “It is one of the toughest battles. Painful and challenging,” he said in his nightly address.

• His comments came after Kyiv said it had repelled “more than 130 enemy attacks” on Sunday as Russian troops continue attempts to surround Bakhmut. Russian forces are said to be contesting lines of communication and preventing resupply.

• Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu visited Mariupol, in a rare visit to occupied Ukraine by a senior Moscow figure. The Russian defence ministry issued images on Monday of Shoigu “inspecting Russian reconstruction efforts of infrastructure”. During his visit, it said, he was presented with a medical centre, a rescue centre, and a “new microdistrict” of 12 five-story residential buildings.

• Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, has reported that in the last 24 hours “Russian troops carried out 29 strikes on Donetsk region and shelled 14 settlements in the region”. It reported that a rocket attack on Kramatorsk had destroyed a school, and that 15 apartment buildings were also damaged.

• Russia’s premier tank force is expected to be re-equipped with Soviet-made T-62 tanks first fielded in 1954 to make up for combat losses, the UK Ministry of Defence has claimed. In its latest update the ministry says there is a “realistic” possibility” that the 60-year-old tanks will be supplied to units which had been expected to receive the next-generation T-14 Armata main battle tank. The ministry said approximately 800 T-62s have been pulled from storage since 2022.

• A British-led £520m international fund to provide fresh weapons for Ukraine and intended to be “low bureaucracy” has been plagued by delays, with only £200m allocated amid warnings that the rest of the funding will not provide arms at “the front until the summer”.

• Most of Ukraine’s winter grain crops – winter wheat and barley – are in good condition and could produce a good harvest, Ukraine’s academy of agricultural science was quoted as saying on Monday.

• Ukraine special forces destroyed a Russian observation tower at the weekend in the city of Bryansk with a kamikaze drone. Kraken, a special forces unit, has taken credit for the attack on a tower that was being used to monitor the border with Ukraine.

• Three Ukrainian missiles have allegedly been shot down by air defence in Russia’s Belgorod region overnight. Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, claimed the strikes in a post to his Telegram channel ON Monday morning and said authorities were working to understand what had occurred.

The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said that the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was of more than symbolic importance than an operational one and it would not necessarily mean that Moscow had regained the momentum in its year-long war effort.

“I think it is more of a symbolic value than it is strategic and operational value,” Austin told reporters while visiting Jordan, adding that he would not predict if or when Bakhmut would be taken by Russian forces.

“The fall of Bakhmut won’t necessarily mean that the Russians have changed the tide of this fight,” Austin added.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has visited Mariupol today, in a rare visit to occupied Ukraine by a senior Moscow figure.

The Russian defence ministry issued images on Monday of Shoigu “inspecting Russian reconstruction efforts of infrastructure”. During his visit, it said he was shown a medical centre, a rescue centre, and a “new microdistrict” of 12 five-story residential buildings.

Tass reports: “Shoigu was also informed about the construction of the largest water conduit that connects the Rostov region and [Donetsk], from the Don River to the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas canal.”

Mariupol was besieged by Russian forces in the early stages of the war, and lies in Donetsk, one of the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation unilaterally claimed to annex in October 2022.

Shoigu’s visit to Ukraine began on Saturday, but the precise locations he has visited have been kept secret for security reasons.