al jazeeraBy Umut Uras Ukraine says that 221 pro-Moscow soldiers have been killed and more than 300 wounded in 24 hours in the front-line city of Bakhmut.
Russia’s defence ministry says that up to 210 Ukrainian soldiers have died in clashes in the broader Donetsk part of the front line.
The Russian Orthodox Church has asked Pope Francis and other religious leaders to persuade Ukraine to stop a crackdown against a Russian-aligned wing of the church.
Russian shelling has killed three civilians in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russian advance stalls in Ukraine’s Bakhmut: Report
Russia’s advance seems to have stalled in Moscow’s campaign to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, according to a leading think tank said in an assessment of the longest ground battle of the war.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said there were no confirmed advances by Russian forces in Bakhmut.
Russian forces and units from the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary Wagner Group continued to launch ground attacks in the city, but there was no evidence that they were able to make any progress, ISW said.
Ukraine slams decision to reject Zelenskyy’s Oscars speech request
Ukrainian foreign minister “sharply” has criticised the decision to reject President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request to speak at the Oscars ceremony, according to a report.
“The decision not to invite Zelenskyy to deliver a speech during the Oscars ceremony, where one of the leading Best Foreign Language Film nominees is an anti-war Picture, is highly hypocritical,” Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Ukraine readies for counteroffensive in Bakhmut: Commander
A top Ukrainian commander has said his forces’ ongoing defence of Bakhmut in the face of fierce and sustained Russian attacks was necessary to “buy time” for a planned counteroffensive.
“The real heroes now are the defenders who are holding the eastern front on their shoulders, and inflicting the heaviest possible losses, sparing neither themselves nor the enemy,” the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, said.
Ukraine Deputy PM stresses human cost of Russian attack on Makhmut
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna has said that the high human cost of Russia’s assault on Bakhmut.
“Thousands of Russian soldiers died at a considerable rate in this battle,” she said in an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche.
“The human mass of its infantry is a formidable weapon, it seems inexhaustible in volume and in time.”
However, even if it did capture the “small town”, she added, “it will not impact the strategic corridors we still control in the region”.
Ukraine FM Kuleba urges Germany to send more ammunition, train up pilots
Ukraine’s foreign minister has urged Germany to speed up supplies of ammunition and to start training Ukrainian pilots on Western fighter jets.
Dmytro Kuleba told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview that ammunition shortages were the “number one” problem in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
He said German weapons manufacturers had told him at the Munich Security Conference last month they were ready to deliver but were waiting for the government to sign contracts.
“So the problem lies with the government,” Kuleba was quoted as saying.
Mr.BadGuy
Publisher
These soldiers are from a country whose president is a Jew Zelensky. Orthodox churches are also being destroyed in this country. Synagogues are not touched. Surprisingly, it turns out that Jews get along well with the Bandera Nazis.