The remarks are the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia's onslaught through a brutal winter.
Russia's Wagner mercenaries "are losing considerable strength and are running out of steam", Kyiv's ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a social media post on Thursday.
"Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk," he said, listing Ukrainian counteroffensives last year that recaptured swathes of land.
There was no immediate response from Moscow to the latest suggestions its forces in Bakhmut were losing momentum, but Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has issued pessimistic statements in recent days warning of a Ukrainian counterassault.
On Monday, Prigozhin published a letter to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, saying Ukraine aimed to cut off Wagner's forces from Russia's regular troops.
A slowdown in Russia's assault on Bakhmut could be in part a consequence of Moscow diverting its troops and resources to other areas.
Britain said Russian troops had made gains further north this month, partially regaining control over the approaches to the town of Kreminna. Intense battles were also under way further south.
Any shift in momentum in Bakhmut, if confirmed, would be remarkable given the city's symbolic importance as the focus of Russia's offensive, and the scale of both sides' losses there in Europe's bloodiest infantry battle since World War II.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Europe to provide more weapons, faster to his forces and impose additional sanctions on Russia, warning the war could otherwise drag on for years.
"If Europe waits, the evil may have time to regroup and prepare for years of war. It is in your power to prevent this," Zelenskiy said in a video address to European Union leaders.
In particular, he reiterated demands for long-range missiles, more ammunition and more modern aircraft, and said the EU needed to speed up the process to grant Ukraine membership.
Front lines have largely been frozen in place since Ukraine's last major offensive in November. Moscow has meanwhile sent hundreds of thousands of freshly called-up reservists and convicts recruited by Wagner from prisons into battle.
Ukraine had looked likely to pull out of Bakhmut weeks ago but decided to fight on, a move some Western military experts described as a major risk given the need to preserve forces for a counterattack later this year.
But Ukrainian commanders said the battle was weakening Russia's forces more than their own.
Zelenskiy had earlier on Thursday continued a tour of frontline provinces, visiting the Kherson region in the south a day after meeting troops near Bakhmut.
He posted a video showing him meeting residents in Posad Pokrovske, a bombed-out village on the former Kherson front line recaptured in Ukraine's last big advance last year.
"We will restore everything, we will rebuild everything. Just like with every city and village that suffered because of the occupiers," he wrote.
This week, President Vladimir Putin made his grandest diplomatic gesture since launching the war a year ago, hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow for a three-day state visit.
The two leaders pledged friendship and denounced the West, but Xi barely mentioned the Ukraine war in public.
On Wednesday, the day Xi left, Moscow launched drone air strikes across northern Ukraine and rockets hit two apartment blocks in Zaporizhzhia in the south.
The death toll rose on Thursday to nine from one of those attacks, a dormitory struck in a riverside town south of Kyiv.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year in what it calls a "special military operation", claiming Kyiv's ties to the West were a security threat. Kyiv and the West call the war an unprovoked assault to subdue an independent country.
