Bakhmut’s mayor has said Russian forces are turning Bakhmut into Mariupol as Ukrainian troops face “severe pressure” from Russian shelling in the city today.

“They want to destroy Bakhmut like they did with Mariupol”, Oleksandr Marchenko, the deputy mayor of Bakhmut, told the BBC Today’s programme.

He added that Vladimir Putin’s troops are using parched land tactics as they did in Mariupol which left buildings, roads, crops and anything that was of use to Ukrainians ruined.

“The Russians are shelling everything they have no goal to save the city. The only goal is killing people and the genocide of the Ukrainian people,” he said.

The Russian Army and the Wagner Group have intensified fighting this morning as troops advance into the northern suburbs, which has left Ukrainians vulnerable to attacks on three sides.

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.

Mariupol was subjected to near constant Russian shelling that destroyed large swathes of the city and killed thousands before Russians took control of the area in December last year.

A senior official confirmed that there is fighting in the streets of Bakhmut but Russia has not taken control.