Russia-Ukraine war live: 4,000 civilians in Bakhmut, says Ukraine, as west says Russia has sustained up to 30,000 casualties there | Russia

Up to 30,000 Russians killed and wounded in effort to capture Bakhmut, western officials estimate

Dan Sabbagh

Russia has sustained “20,000 to 30,000 casualties’’ – killed and wounded – in trying to capture Bakhmut, western officials estimated at a briefing on Tuesday. While no firm figure was offered for Ukrainian losses, the official said it was “significantly less”.

The official speculated that a high proportion of those casualties, many of which will be prisoners recruited by Wagner, could have been killed. “The death rates of Wagner has been significantly higher than the Russian armed forces,” they said, which have been estimated at three wounded to one killed.

The figures are crude estimates and impossible to verify, but if broadly accurate would mean that Russia may have sustained more casualties than the US did in 20 years of operations in Afghanistan, where a little less than 21,000 were killed and wounded.

The officials said they believed that Ukraine is still able to hold and resupply its military in Bakhmut, although the city is surrounded from three sides and said the defenders could “last for another month” – or chose to make a tactical withdrawal “within a week”. But the course of the long-running battle remained uncertain, they added.

The Ukrainian deputy prime minister told regional media on Tuesday that fewer than 4,000 civilians, including 38 children remain in Bakhmut.

“Approximately 38 children, as far as we know, remain in Bakhmut today,” AFP quotes Iryna Vereshchuk saying.

The city, the focus of fierce fighting in the Donbas region, had an estimated prewar population of about 70,000 people.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine is committed to defending the embattled city despite a partial encirclement, and there are conflicting reports about the state of the defence of the city.

Jan Gagin, an adviser to the Russian-installed leaders in the occupied portion of Donetsk, has claimed that Russian forces control about half of Bakhmut, while Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group whose troops are spearheading the attack, has said that between 12,000 and 20,000 Ukrainian troops remain defending it.

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said on Tuesday the seizure of Bakhmut would allow Moscow’s forces to mount further offensive operations.

Agence France-Presse is carrying some comments it attributes to founder of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin. It reports that Prigozhin would not comment on defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s earlier remarks that the capture of the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut was key to launching a further offensive in the wider region.

In remarks carried by his press service, Prigozhin urged against “putting the cart before the horse, saying that we have taken Bakhmut and what will happen after”.

He estimated that between “12,000 and 20,000” Ukrainian troops were still defending the city.

“It is very complicated to kill between 12,000-20,000 Ukrainian soldiers by tomorrow morning. Such masters only exist in the depths of the general staff or at Soyuzmultfilm,” he said, referring to the Russian cartoon studio founded in the Soviet era.

Prigozhin also said that he “had not met” Shoigu in Bakhmut, where Prigozhin claims to have gone himself. The defence minister was in occupied areas of Ukraine at the weekend, including Mariupol.

On television this morning in Russia, Shoigu said Bakhmut “is an important defensive hub for Ukrainian troops in Donbas” and that “capturing it will allow for further offensive operations deep into the defence lines of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

• A court in Moscow sentenced a student activist to eight and a half years in prison for social media posts criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Dmitry Ivanov was convicted on Tuesday of spreading false information about the Russian army, AP reports.

• The situation is “stable and controlled” in the Luhansk region the governor, Serhiy Haidai said. In a post on Telegram, Haidai said the number of attacks in the direction of Bilogorivka and Kreminnaya had increased. Today, he said, the Russians have “pulled back to replenish their reserves”.

• The United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, will meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Wednesday to discuss extending a deal with Moscow that allows the Black Sea export of Ukraine grains, according to Reuters.

• A 14-year-old Ukrainian girl who died after she was found unconscious on a beach in south Devon on Saturday has been named as Albina Yevko. The teenager was found on Dawlish town beach, near where she was living, on Saturday evening after a search involving a police helicopter and HM Coastguard.

• Ukraine has named the unarmed prisoner of war who appeared to have been shot dead by Russian soldiers, as the president delivered an overnight message resolving to “find the murderers”. In the graphic 12-second clip that first circulated on Telegram on Monday a detained combatant, named by the Ukrainian military as Tymofiy Mykolayovych Shadura, is seen standing in a shallow trench smoking a cigarette before apparently shot with automatic weapons.

• Poland is to send more tanks to Ukraine this week, the country’s defence minister said. Poland had promised to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks in total.

• A decision on a permanent deployment of a German brigade to Lithuania will be “up to Nato”, German defence minister Boris Pistorius said in response to calls by Vilnius for a larger Nato presence in the country.

• Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that the seizure of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine would allow Moscow’s forces to mount further offensive operations.

• Russian forces carried out 50 airstrikes and five missile strikes overnight and Ukrainian forces repelled 37 attacks in the area around Bakhmut, according to the latest update by the General staff of the armed forces of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces claim to have carried out 15 airstrikes against Russian forces, including a strike on an anti-aircraft system. It also claimed to have shot down an SU-25 aircraft, nine Shaheed drones and eight other drones.

• Jan Gagin, an adviser to the Russian-installed leaders in the occupied portion of Donetsk, has claimed that Russian forces control about half of Bakhmut and have control over all the asphalt roads in the area. None of the claims about the situation in Bakhmut have been independently verified.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine is committed to defending the embattled city despite a partial encirclement. The Ukrainian president said he had held a meeting with senior generals and commanders in which it was resolved that there was “no part of Ukraine” that “can be abandoned”.

• Ukraine’s ongoing defence of Bakhmut is forcing Russian to engage in a costly battle for a city that “isn’t intrinsically important operationally or strategically”, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

• Zelenskiy paid tribute to a soldier whose execution by machine gun was filmed and uploaded to social media. The graphic video shows a man smoking a cigarette who says “glory to Ukraine” before he is shot at what appears to be close range.

• Ukraine has started online talks with partners on extending the Black Sea grain initiative aimed at ensuring Kyiv can keep shipping grain to global markets, a senior Ukrainian government source has said on Tuesday. The source said Ukraine had not held discussions with Russia, which blockaded Ukrainian Black Sea ports after its invasion last year, but that it was Kyiv’s understanding that its partners were talking to Moscow.

• A Moscow court has sentenced the student activist Dmitry Ivanov to eight and a half years in prison as the Kremin escalates its crackdown on anti-war dissent.

• Belarus detained on Tuesday what it said was a Ukrainian “terrorist group” working with Kyiv’s intelligence services over attempted sabotage at a Belarusian airfield. Belarusian anti-government activists said last month they had blown up a sophisticated Russian military surveillance aircraft in a drone attack at an airfield near the Belarusian capital Minsk, a claim disputed by Moscow and Minsk.

• The Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol in Crimea has denied reports that explosions have been heard near Belbek airbase. Mikhail Razvozhaev posted to Telegram to say “The public is again writing about some kind of explosion near the airfield. This is a lie. Ship crews are training in the outer road. Everything is calm in the city.”

• China’s foreign minister Qin Gang says the country must strengthen its relationship with Russia in the face of continued hostility from the US. In a fiery press conference, his first appearance as foreign minister, Qin outlined China’s foreign policy agenda for the coming years, presenting its relationship with Russia as a beacon of strength and stability, and the US and its allies as a source of tension and conflict.