NEW YORK (Nettavisen): The battle for Bakhmut, a medium-sized city which before the war had 70,000 inhabitants, has been going on for months and is considered the bloodiest battle to date in Ukraine.
Have “full control”
An unknown number of soldiers have been killed, while the front lines have remained almost fixed and the city has been left in ruins in the Russian attacks.
Some believe that the city primarily has a symbolic value, while others point out that the Russians can use it as a starting point to take control of several cities.
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The Wagner group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed earlier this month that Bakhmut will fall by April, and on Friday the group claimed to have captured the village of Berkhivka, just north of Bakhmut.
The Wagner group’s leader made the claim that they have “complete control” of Berkhivka on the anniversary of the Russian invasion, but the claim cannot be verified.
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– The meat grinder
Now a US Marine says that the life expectancy of those soldiers who are fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut is shockingly low.
– It is quite bad at ground level, there are many victims. Life expectancy is around four hours on the front line, says US Marine Troy Offenbecker ABC News.
He fights on the Ukrainian side with the International Legion, which is a military unit made up of foreign fighters.
The fighting in Bakhmut is so bad, according to Offenbecker, that it has been nicknamed the “meat grinder”.
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According to Ukrainian sources, there should still be just under 5,000 civilians left in Bakhmut.
Offenbecker tells ABC News that there are “quite a few” civilian families left in the parts of the city not yet taken by Russian forces, despite an order to evacuate last week.
– Many of these families are poor. They have nowhere to go, even if they wanted to. So the reality is that there are still many civilians stuck in the middle of this, says Offenberg.
Here’s a Facebook video that Offenberg himself posted from Bakhmut this week.
In January, another prominent US military official is said to have called the fighting in and around Bakhmut truly fierce and brutal.
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– Here we are talking about thousands upon thousands of artillery rounds that have been fired between both sides. In many cases, it is a question of several thousand artillery rounds in a day, the official said, according to Insider.
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– Not so that everyone dies
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a few days ago that Ukrainian soldiers will continue to defend Bakhmut, but also acknowledges that the battle is costing many lives.
– It is important for us to defend it, but not at all costs, and not so that everyone dies, he says in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera Sunday.
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According to an intelligence update from Britain’s Ministry of Defense this week, Russia has been under “increasing political pressure” to claim a war victory in connection with the first anniversary of the innovation.
– It is likely that Russia will claim that Bakhmut has been conquered in order to align itself after the anniversary, regardless of what the reality is on the ground, it was said in an update from British intelligence earlier this week.
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– Over 20,000 killed or wounded
Western intelligence sources estimate that Russia has suffered 200,000 casualties in the war, wounded or killed, including 60,000 soldiers who are estimated to have been killed.
In mid-January, it was still unclear exactly how many had been killed so far in the war in Ukraine. Defense leadership in the United States estimated last November that around 200,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded – about the same number on the Russian and Ukrainian sides.
In an interview with Aftenposten at the end of January this year, Chief of Defense Eirik Kristoffersen estimated that 30,000 civilians had been killed so far – and that the Russian casualty figures were beginning to approach 180,000. In total, he estimated that there are around 300,000 killed and wounded as a result of the war so far.
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The White House estimated earlier this month that 30,000 mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group had either been killed or wounded in Ukraine in the past year.
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