KYIV - Despite a recent easing of combat in Bakhmut, clashes around the obliterated city in eastern Ukraine continued, with Moscow suffering significant losses, said Kyiv’s armed forces on Sunday.

Ukraine’s top military command said in its daily report on Sunday that Russian forces carried out two unsuccessful operations around Bakhmut, and launched a number of air strikes and artillery shelling on nearby villages.

The head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group said on Saturday that 99 per cent of his fighters had left Bakhmut after their months-long assault in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

Ukraine said late in May that fighting had eased in the area, but the commander of the nation’s ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces continued their fight there.

“The enemy continues to suffer significant losses in the Bakhmut direction,” Gen Syrskyi said on the Telegram messaging app after what he said was a visit to troops around Bakhmut.

“Defence forces continue to fight. We will win.”

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

Bakhmut, once home to 70,000 people, has no strategic value, according to military analysts.

But Moscow has said that capturing it would be a stepping stone to advance deeper into the industrial region of Donbas, which it claims to have annexed from Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has compared Bakhmut’s destruction to the United States atomic bomb attack on Japan’s Hiroshima in World War II.

The Ukrainian daily report on Sunday said some 23 combat clashes took place over the past day in the Donetsk region, home to Bakhmut and the neighbouring Luhansk region, which together make up the Donbas.

British defence intelligence said on Saturday that Russia continued to redeploy regular military units to the Bakhmut sector, replacing Wagner fighters.

Mr Zelensky said in an interview published on Saturday that his forces were ready to launch the long-expected counteroffensive to reclaim territory now occupied by Russia.

Kyiv hopes the counteroffensive will change the dynamics of the war that has raged since Russia invaded its smaller neighbour 15 months ago.

Russia now controls nearly all the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as swathes of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. REUTERS