Russian forces have likely seized the center of the hotly contested city of Bakhmut, where they are threatening an essential supply route for Ukrainian forces in the west, British intelligence said Friday.

The eastern city is one of the last urban areas of Donetsk that has withstood Russian incursion. Now mostly reduced to rubble, the city center has been the focus of intense fighting for months.

“Ukraine’s key 0506 supply route to the west of the town is likely severely threatened,” the British intelligence update warned.

Ukrainian military expert Vladyslav Selezniov previously said that forces will have to retreat if the ability to get supplies in and wounded soldiers out is further compromised.

“The situation is difficult, the enemy is concentrating maximum efforts to capture Bakhmut. However [Ukraine] is suffering serious losses and not reaching strategic success,” Eastern Military Command spokesperson Serhiy Cherevatyi told Reuters.

Earlier this week, Cherevatyi shot down the Kremlin’s claims that it raised the Russian flag over one of Bakhmut’s administrative buildings.

“They raised the flag over some kind of toilet. They attached it to the side of who knows what, hung their rag and said they had captured the city. Well good, let them think they’ve taken it,” he told Reuters by phone.

Analysts say that both sides have likely suffered major losses in the fight for the city.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said last week that Russia’s Wagner Group has around 6,000 professional personnel and 20,000 to 30,000 recruits in the area. 

More than three-quarters of the Wagner forces are reportedly inmates recruited from prisons to essentially serve as bullet catchers in a battle so intense it’s been called a “meat grinder.”

With Post wires