FBI arrests Pentagon leaks suspect
Mercenaries for the pro-Russia Wagner group claim to have made fresh gains in Bakhmut, but Ukraine’s forces are reported to still be holding on in the frontline Donetsk city.
Vladimir Putin’s defence ministry claimed that Wagner had captured two districts in the centre and northwest of Bakhmut, the city where Kyiv has hunkered down for months in an apparently successful bid to force Russia into conceding heavy losses.
“Bloody battles unprecedented in recent decades are taking place in the middle of the city’s urban area,” said Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, whose remaining forces in Bakhmut have been facing “significant resupply issues”, according to UK intelligence.
“Our soldiers are doing everything in bloody and fierce battles to grind down [the enemy’s] combat capability and break its morale. Every day, in every corner of this city, they are successfully doing so,” he told the 1+1 television channel.
The Russian defence ministry said its paratrooper units were supporting two previously claimed advances on Saturday by holding back Ukrainian forces on the flanks.
