War Ukraine, the USA: furious internal struggles in the Kremlin. Bakhmut, Kiev assures: “We will continue to defend it”

Ukrainian fighters claim that bodies of civilians lie on the streets of Bakhmut, unable to recover them due to the intensity of the battle raging in the city. Speaking to Sky News, Khalid Makiazho, part of a Chechen battalion supporting Ukraine, described a landscape of utter devastation, constant artillery barrages and “chaotic shelling”. According to Makiazho, the remaining civilians take refuge in the basements. “There are still people in the city, some are very old, there are also civilian corpses, we are trying to recover the bodies but there is no way to reach them.”

Nearly 1,100 Russian soldiers have been killed by Ukrainian forces in the past 24 hours, according to Kiev’s defense ministry, confirming the high death toll on both sides in recent days as the battle for the town of Bakhmut rages on. In the past 24 hours, 1,090 Russian personnel have been killed, bringing the number of Moscow soldiers who have died since February 24, 2022 to 159,090, the ministry reported on Twitter.

In the past 24 hours alone, Russia has launched 48 attacks against civilians in the Donetsk region, according to the Ukrainian National Police. Ukrinform reports it. According to the Kyiv Independent, police said 15 towns were attacked, including Bakhmut, Kostjantynivka and Avdiivka. From Moscow they would use S-300 missiles, aircraft, Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers, artillery, mortars and tanks. Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in his daily briefing that two civilians were killed and four were injured in the past day.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharovarejected as a “false” the statements attributed to her by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), according to which she spoke of Russian “clashes between elites” during a seminar.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marai Zacharova actually “confirmed that there is infighting in Kremlin circles, that the Kremlin has relinquished control of Russia’s information space, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently fails to resolve all of this.” . This is what we read in the daily bulletin of the American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Yesterday alone 1,090 Russian soldiers would have been killed, bringing the total number of dead since the beginning of the invasion to 159,090. This was stated by the daily bulletin of the general staff of Kiev, adding that yesterday 8 tanks, 7 armored vehicles and 4 artillery systems of the Russian army were destroyed.

“If we withdrew from Bakhmut, what would change? Russia would take Bakhmut and then continue its offensive against Chasiv Yar, so every city behind Bakhmut could suffer the same fate”: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said, stating that Kiev intends to continue defending the city, considered a node strategy of the Russian advance. The Guardian reports it. When asked ‘how long could Ukrainian forces hold out?’, Kuleba likened the city’s defense to that of a house against an intruder trying to kill its inhabitants and take everything they own.

Russian forces killed two civilians and wounded four others in the Donetsk region yesterday, according to the local military administration. «On March 11, the Russians killed two residents of the Donetsk region: in Kostiantynivka and Tonenke. Four more people were injured in the region,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, wrote in Telegram, reports Ukrinform. According to Kyrylenko, it is currently impossible to establish the exact number of victims in Mariupol and Volnovakha.

The West and especially Germany should start training Ukrainian pilots to fly modern fighter jets, even if delivery of advanced Western jets is not forthcoming, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement. interview with the German Sunday tabloid Bild am Sonntag, in which he also urged German manufacturers to speed up the delivery of ammunition to the Kiev army, because, he said, ammunition shortages were currently the “number one problem” in defense since the Russian invasion. Kuleba said at the Munich Security Conference in February, German arms manufacturers reassured him that deliveries were ready, pending government signing of contracts.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 40 missiles have hit the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech overnight.

Russian rockets in the night on the city of Ochakiv (population 20,000), located 60 kilometers southwest of Mykolaiv. This was reported on Telegram – as reported by the Kyiv Independent – by the police chief of Mykolaiv, Serhii Shaikhet. Russian forces used various rocket launchers to target the city. The bullets set fire to some cars but no casualties were reported. Emergency services are working on the site of the attack.