Ukraine’s military said on March 5 that it had repelled more than 130 enemy attacks in 24 hours and claimed to be inflicting massive Russian casualties but gave no definite word on the fate of Bakhmut, where Russian forces were said to have nearly surrounded the devastated city.
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Kyiv has sought to emphasize the toll in casualties that it has inflicted on the Russian side amid grinding offensives including Moscow’s ongoing efforts to encircle and capture Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, tried to stress Kyiv’s preparations and Western support for early EU entry as another aspect of ongoing international support for Ukrainians defending their country from the unprovoked full-scale Russian invasion that began one year ago.
Zelensky said after meeting European Parliament President Roberta Metsola at an event in western Ukraine focused in part on Russian war crimes that “the task is to actively prepare everything for our country’s membership in the European Union, increase arms deliveries to Ukraine, and strengthen sanctions against Russia.”
In its regular daily report early on March 5, the Ukrainian General Staff cited Russian offensives in the directions of Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, Lyman, and Shakhtar in Donetsk, as well as farther north in Kupyan, in the Kharkiv region.
It also said it had killed 930 Russian troops in the previous 24 hours of fighting.
Both sides in the fighting classify their casualty figures, and RFE/RL cannot independently confirm casualty or other battlefield reports from either side.
Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, told CNN on March 4 that its soldiers still controlled Bakhmut.
“There is no mass withdrawal of Ukrainian troops either,” Cherevaty said.
Just one road leading from Bakhmut was said to be open as what Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin described as the “pincer” closed, and reports suggested that the few thousand residents remaining in city, which had a prewar population of around 70,000, would be forced to flee by foot.
Moscow, meanwhile, tried to project confidence with a second claim in as many days of a visit to the front lines by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, although his exact whereabouts were impossible to confirm.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Shoigu met with army commanders in the war zone to be briefed on the situation.
An accompanying video showed Shoigu with Russia’s top commander, General Valery Gerasimov, and a deputy, General Sergei Surovikin.
Amid reports of battlefield setbacks since the invasion began but particularly in recent months, Shoigu has come under increasing pressure from pro-war advocates inside Russia, including Wagner chief Prigozhin, for the military’s performance.
The Russian Defense Ministry on March 4 said Shoigu had visited near the front lines of eastern Ukraine, without specifying the location.
Kyiv has acknowledged the dire situation around Bakhmut’s defense but was said to have been still swapping in troops, while Western military experts said the situation there is critical under “increasingly severe pressure.”
“In the direction of Bakhmut, the enemy has not abandoned an attempt to surround the city of Bakhmut,” the General Staff said early on March 5.
Western experts have questioned the Russian push for Bakhmut, saying it has less strategic and more symbolic value for the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian General Staff said that by its count, the Russians had lost more than 153,000 soldiers since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
U.S. and other Western officials recently estimated that the number of total casualties on the Russian side — including dead and wounded — was approaching 200,000.
Moscow has acknowledged “significant” losses but last reported accumulated casualties of under 6,000 by September.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s air forces argued on March 5 for the supply of modern Western aircraft, particularly U.S.-designed F-16s, amid an expanding threat from Russian remotely launched missiles, glide bombs, and modified bombs that “can fly tens of kilometers” to hit their targets.
The spokesman, Yuriy Ignat, said in televised remarks that such aircraft could also help Ukrainian forces “drive off” the Russian planes that launch such weapons.