Heavy casualties reported in Bakhmut as battle for city rages
Ukraine and Russia say thousands have been killed or badly wounded as each side battles for control of the town.
Ukraine and Russia have reported heavy casualties as the slow, grinding fight for control of the salt-mining town of Bakhmut continues in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine controls the area to the west of the now ruined and nearly deserted Bakhmut, while Russia’s Wagner Group controls most of the eastern part, according to British intelligence, with the Bakhmutka River that winds through the town marking the front line.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 1,100 Russian soldiers had been killed in the past few days fighting along the Bakhmut section of the front line.
“In less than a week, starting from the 6th March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia’s irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
He added that some 1,500 Russian soldiers had been so badly wounded they were unable to continue fighting.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces were conducting further military operations in the eastern Donetsk region which, together with neighbouring Luhansk, makes up the industrial Donbas.
The ministry said Russian forces had killed more than 220 Ukrainian service members over the past 24 hours. Read More…
