Casualties in Donetsk mount as Russia, Ukraine fight for Bakhmut
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KYIV – 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
Ukrainian forces control the 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 Zelensky said Russian forces had suffered a death toll of more than 1,100 in the past few days of fighting along the Bakhmut section of the front line.
“In less than a week, starting from March 6, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia’s irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut,” Mr Zelensky 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 the 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.
Both sides have admitted to suffering and inflicting significant losses in Bakhmut over the past few months, while the exact number of casualties is difficult to independently verify.
Ukraine has repeatedly said that the defence of Bakhmut would continue, with top commanders saying at the weekend that the fight there allows them to gain time needed to prepare a broader Kyiv counter-attack soon.
“On Bakhmut: The situation there is difficult, very difficult, the enemy is fighting for every metre,” Mr Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group of mercenaries said on Sunday in a voice recording published on the Telegram channel of his press service.
“And the closer to the city centre, the fiercer the fighting.”
Moscow says capturing Bakhmut would punch a hole in Ukrainian defences and be a step towards seizing all of the Donbas industrial region, a major target.
But fighting and heavy shelling have also been ongoing along the entire front line in Ukraine’s east and south, including other parts of Donetsk.
According to Russia-installed officials in the Russia-controlled city of Donetsk, the city was shelled four times by Ukraine forces on Sunday, affecting residential areas and damaging power lines.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the report. Both sides have repeatedly said they are not targeting civilians in their attacks.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, as well as soldiers on both sides.
Russia has bombarded Ukrainian cities and set millions of civilians to flight in what Kyiv and the West call an unprovoked war of conquest.
Ms Svetlana Boiko, 66, was wounded in the Donetsk shelling when her apartment was struck.
She told Reuters that shelling “used to fly over without ever hitting us”.
“This is the first time since 2014 that it has hit us. So, this is what 2023 looks like,” Ms Boiko said.
Last September, Russia claimed it had annexed the Donetsk region and three other Ukrainian regions, including parts that have been held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. REUTERS
