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The 370th day of the war has once again been marked by the situation at the front. The United States does not expect Russia to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine any time soon, a senior Pentagon official said on Tuesday, describing the situation on the front lines as “hard attrition.” And in few places is this attrition harder than around the besieged city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where the situation is “extremely tense,” according to the commander of Kiev’s ground forces, Colonel Oleksandr Sirskyi. The mercenaries of the Wagner Group have taken over one of the neighborhoods located on the outskirts of the town, always according to the version of Denis Pushilin, interim chief imposed by the Kremlin in the Ukrainian province of Donetsk, annexed by the Kremlin last September illegal way. “Now they have liberated the Stupki neighborhood. If we take into account that there are fights for each house there, this is an important success in the current phase,” Pushilin told Russian public television. The Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, stated in his televised speech on Tuesday that the intensity of the fighting in Bakhmut “does not do anything but increase.” The president has indicated that the General Staff has indicated to him that 800 Russian soldiers have died in Bakhmut alone since Thursday. Zelenski wanted to leave a message of encouragement to the population by indicating that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway. “We are preparing the return of our soldiers to active actions for the liberation of our land”, he pointed out. Russia has held this Tuesday anti-aircraft defense maneuvers in the west of the country, which have included the use of fighters, in the midst of several drone attacks about a hundred kilometers from Moscow and in the south of the country. “During the training, the anti-aircraft defense guard forces carried out missions of detection, hunting and identification of alleged offending targets,” the Ministry of Defense reported in a statement. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the country has to use the experience gained on the battlefield in Ukraine to strengthen national security. In a speech before those responsible for Russian intelligence, the president has asked the secret services to increase surveillance of strategic infrastructures and to prevent groups of saboteurs from crossing the border between Ukraine and Russia given the increase in espionage both by Kiev as from the West. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, warned this Tuesday in a statement that the team that the organization has at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, has been three weeks unable to be relieved. According to the statement, Grossi has reminded both parties that the organization’s work is in everyone’s interest and expressed his expectation that the relief can finally take place next week. Ukraine on Tuesday asked the UN and Turkey to start negotiations to extend the grain export agreement, but there has been no response, a Ukrainian government source said on Tuesday. Yuriy Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy restoration minister, said last week that Kiev is seeking an extension of at least a year that would also add the port of Mikolaiv to the three ports (Odessa, Yuzhne and Chernomorsk) as authorized export points.
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