Casualties in Donetsk mount as Russia, Ukraine fight for Bakhmut
KYIV (MNP) – Both Ukraine and Russia on Sunday reported high casualties in Ukraine’s Donetsk region with the slow, long-lasting and bloody fight for the small town of Bakhmut continuing as Moscow presses to advance into its neighbour’s territory.
Ukraine forces control west of the now ruined and nearly deserted Bakhmut, while Russia’s Wagner Group controls most of the eastern part, British intelligence said, with the Bakhmutka River that bisects the town marking the front line.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces had suffered more than 1,100 dead in the past few days fighting along the Bakhmut section of the frontline.
“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,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
He said Russian forces had also sustained 1,500 “sanitary losses” – soldiers wounded badly enough to keep them out of further action.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces were conducting further military operations in the Donetsk region which, together with adjacent Luhansk region, makes up Donbas.
The ministry said Russian forces had killed more than 220 Ukrainian service members over the past 24 hours.
“In the Donetsk direction… more than 220 Ukrainian servicemen, an infantry fighting vehicle, three armoured fighting vehicles, seven vehicles, as well as a D-30 howitzer were destroyed during the day,” the ministry said.
