(Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia both claimed on Saturday that hundreds of enemy troops were killed over the previous 24 hours in the fight for Bakhmut, with Kyiv fending off unabating attacks and a small river that bisects the town now marking the new front line.
FIGHTING IN BAKHMUT, KHERSON
* Serhiy Cherevatyi, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, said 221 pro-Moscow troops were killed and more than 300 wounded in Bakhmut. Russia’s defence ministry said that up to 210 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the broader Donetsk part of the frontline.
* Three civilians were killed in Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, denouncing what he called “brutal terrorist attacks” by pro-Moscow units.
* Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Friday his Wagner private army had opened recruitment centres in 42 cities as he seeks to replenish its ranks after heavy losses in fighting for Bakhmut.
DIPLOMACY, WEAPONS
* Ukraine’s foreign minister urged Germany in an interview published on Sunday to speed up supplies of ammunition and to start training Ukrainian pilots on Western fighter jets.
* The European Union could soon top up the fund used for purchasing weapons for Ukraine by 3.5 billion euros ($3.7 billion), a senior EU official said on Friday.
* Russia on Friday cautioned allies across the former Soviet Union of the perils of aligning with the United States after what Moscow said was a Western-backed coup attempt in Georgia similar to the Ukrainian “Maidan” revolution of 2014.
CHURCH
* Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Saturday asked Pope Francis and other religious leaders to persuade Ukraine to stop a crackdown against a historically Russian-aligned wing of the church. On Friday, Ukrainian officials ordered the Orthodox Church wing to leave a monastery complex in Kyiv where it is based, the latest move against a denomination regarded with deep suspicion by the government.
(Compiled by Reuters editors)
