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Post by Admin on May 22, 2023 17:38:48 GMT
The meat grinder, hell on earth, the fortress, a blackened nightmare, and now Europe’s Hiroshima.
Bakhmut has been called many things over the course of its nine-and-a-half month siege. Few descriptions capture the scale of loss and destruction. Which side - if any - has come out on top of this costly battle is unclear.
The small eastern city has undoubtedly been the site of the bloodiest fighting since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. It is also the longest battle since the Second World War.
Thousands of men have been sent to their deaths, sucked into what has been called a vortex of savage and relentless fighting.
US intelligence believes Russia has suffered about 100,000 casualties around the city since December last year alone. Some 20,000 of those are thought to have been killed. That is more than half the total number of Russians thought to have died across Ukraine since the invasion began.
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Post by Admin on May 23, 2023 4:55:11 GMT
The battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut appears to be winding down with Ukraine losing its last major stronghold. A top commander says his troops only retain an “insignificant” part of the city. NBC’s Molly Hunter reports for TODAY.
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Post by Admin on May 24, 2023 3:22:25 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 24, 2023 18:36:05 GMT
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 fighters in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, with about 20% of the 50,000 Russian convicts he recruited to fight in the 15-month war dying in the eastern Ukrainian city.
The figure was in stark contrast with widely disputed claims from Moscow that it lost just over 6,000 troops in the war, and is higher than the official estimate of the Soviet losses in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops between 1979-89. Ukraine hasn't said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Analysts believe the nine-month fight for Bakhmut alone has cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, among them convicts who reportedly received little training before being sent to the front.
Russia’s invasion goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine has backfired because Kyiv’s military has become stronger with the supply of weapons and training by its Western allies, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview published late Tuesday with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Kremlin political strategist.
Prigozhin also said the Kremlin’s forces have killed civilians during the war, something Moscow has repeatedly and vehemently denied.
Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is known for his bluster — often spiced with obscenities — and has previously made unverifiable claims, some of which he later backtracked on.
Earlier this month, his spokespeople published a video of him shouting, swearing and pointing at about 30 uniformed bodies lying on the ground, saying they were Wagner fighters who died in a single day. He claimed the Russian Defense Ministry had starved his men of ammunition and threatened to give up the fight for Bakhmut.
He also said in Tuesday's interview it was possible that Kyiv’s anticipated counteroffensive in coming weeks, given continued Western support, might push Russian forces out of southern and eastern Ukraine as well as annexed Crimea.
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Post by Admin on May 25, 2023 18:44:01 GMT
The eastern Ukrainian city has been the focus of intense fighting in recent months.
In unverified footage provided by Prigozhin press service, the owner of Wagner said its troops had begun withdrawing, having claimed before that they had full control of the city - which Ukraine contests.
#ukrainewar #wagner #vladimirputin #russia
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