Ukraine says Russia’s losses on Bakhmut front nearing earlier Wagner losses

Ukraine said on Monday that Russia’s losses in the vicinity of the flashpoint city of Bakhmut are now approaching those of the Wagner group during the peak of the battles for control over the city with the mercenary forces.

“The [Russians] suffer regular losses [in the vicinity of Bakhmut]. These losses are approaching those that were at the peak of the battles with the Wagner [mercenaries],” the spokesperson for the eastern military command Serhiy Cherevatyi said according to Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda.

Cherevatyi gave an example statistic that within the past 24 hours 81 Russians were killed and 156 injured. He added that the Russian forces were fiercely fighting back as they deployed artillery against Ukrainian forces 556 times and conducted four airstrikes.

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The now -exiled Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner forces took control of Bakhmut in May after the longest and most brutal battles of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The White House estimated in May that Russia’s military had suffered 100,000 casualties over the past five months in Bakhmut fighting and according to US intelligence estimates that figure included more than 20,000 dead, half of them from Wagner troops.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, over the past day in the Bakhmut direction, Ukrainian troops repelled all enemy attacks near Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Hryhorivka and Ivanivske. Russians tried to regain their lost positions near Kurdiumivka but had no success. Russians launched air strikes near the Donetsk region’s Pivnichne and New York. Over 10 settlements were affected by Russian artillery strikes.

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