While the battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine continued on Monday, both Ukrainian and Russian forces suffered significant losses there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address that his forces have killed more than 1,100 Russian troops and wounded 1,500 in the past week in the embattled city of Bakhmut.
Zelensky declared that Russia had suffered an irreparable defeat there, close to Bakhmut, in less than a week starting on March 6. “We managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy forces in the Bakhmut area alone,” he added.
In contrast, Russia asserted that it had killed more than 220 Ukrainian servicemen in the previous 24 hours as the two sides swapped accusations during a protracted battle in the front lines of an attrition war that has lasted a full year.Victory in Bakhmut would bring Russia a step closer to controlling all of Donetsk, one of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine it annexed in September.
Ukraine’s ground forces commander Col. Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said assault units of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group were “advancing from several directions, trying to break through the defenses of our troops and advance to the central districts of the city.”
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Monday that the Ukraine Defense Forces had repelled 102 attacks by Russian forces in Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Maryinka and Shakhtarsk in the past 24 hours.
