Heavy fighting is taking place near Bakhmut, a city in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which has been the main target of the Russian army for months. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian commanders of “madness” in their efforts to capture the eastern city of Bakhmut. He added that his army had shot down nearly 250 Russian helicopters during the war. During the night, the Russians bombarded the Kyiv region and Zaporozhye.
UPDATE 9.00 “The situation on the front line does not know any significant changes. In the Donetsk region, near Bahmut and Avdiivka, extremely fierce fighting is taking place,” said the Ukrainian president in his daily intervention broadcast on social networks.
On Tuesday, seven civilians were killed and three others were wounded in Bahmut, according to regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko.
Fighting is raging in the area, with Russian forces desperate for victories after several setbacks since early September.
“The Russian occupiers have already lost so much equipment, aviation and other, that most of the world’s armies simply do not have and will never have in service,” assured President Zelenski. According to him, “Russia will not be able to compensate for these losses”. The Ukrainian leader once again denounced the “madness of the Russian commanders” who “day after day send people to their deaths” and which, in his opinion, is visible, especially in the east of the country.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelensky, said that in one day Russian forces launched eight separate attacks on the town of Bahmut before lunchtime, all of which were repulsed.
250 Russian helicopters were shot down
UPDATE 8.40 The Ukrainian military has shot down nearly 250 Russian helicopters since the start of the war.
The Russian occupiers have already lost as much military equipment as most of the world’s armies will never have, Volodymyr Zelensky said.
According to him, Russia will not be able to recover these losses.
Oil depot on fire
UPDATE 8.30 An oil depot in the Russian-occupied city of Shakhtarsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region has reportedly been set on fire, according to local media reports.
Vitaly Khhotsenko, the Moscow-appointed head of the city’s regional administration, told the TASS agency that 12 fuel tanks were damaged near the station as a result of shelling by Ukrainian troops.
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And the city’s mayor, Alexander Shatov, claimed that Ukrainian troops bombed the Shakhtarsk train station, which caused the fire, according to the publication.
The dirty secret that Belarusian doctors are forced to keep about Russian soldiers who have returned from the front
UPDATE 8.10 The exact number of Russian soldiers who have lost their lives or been injured in Ukraine remains a mystery to all but a few Kremlin insiders. Lukashenko admitted that Belarus provides medical aid to Russian military personnel, but the hospitals where the soldiers are treated are closely monitored to keep secret the high number of casualties among the Russian military and the role played by Minsk in their treatment.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko allowed his close ally Putin to use the country’s territory, which shares a border of more than 1,000 kilometers with Ukraine, to launch the military invasion. With his permission, Putin treated Belarus as an extension of Russian territory, sending equipment and around 30,000 troops for joint military exercises.
Russia built temporary camps and field hospitals on Belarusian fields, which at the time – February 24 – were frozen, and sent military systems, artillery, helicopters and fighter jets near the border.
When Putin declared the start of the “special military operation”, missiles began to flow into Ukraine, paratroopers and columns of Russian soldiers rushed towards Kiev in southern Belarus – this was the beginning of what the Kremlin intended to be a lightning-quick beheading of the Ukrainian government.
But as the Russian assault increasingly stumbled in the face of Ukrainian resistance, Russian soldiers, this time wounded from the early days of the war, began pouring across the Belarusian-Ukrainian border in the opposite direction to be treated in more civilian hospitals in Belarus, according to the CNN investigation.
The doctors working there were engaged in a war they didn’t sign up for and enlisted against their will to save the lives of soldiers returning wounded from the front. Many of them were forced to sign confidentiality agreements and told never to talk about what they saw at work. From the operating table, Belarusian medical personnel gained perhaps the clearest picture of how many casualties the Russian army had in the first weeks of the war.
Attacks in Kyiv and Zaporozhye
UPDATE 7.50 Russian forces reportedly struck the Kiev region overnight, the press wrote and regional officials said.
Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba did not say where the attack took place, but said rescuers were on the scene.
He wrote on Telegram: The Russians are terrorizing the Kyiv region at night.
Rescuers and all emergency services are on the scene. Actions are taken to extinguish the fire and reduce the consequences of the impact”
At midnight, air raid alerts sounded in Kyiv and residents were urged to seek shelter.
Russian forces also hit the city of Zaporozhye, in southeastern Ukraine. The city’s acting mayor, Anatoly Kurtev, reported that Russian forces struck the city as well as the surrounding area, causing a fire.