Thursday, April 20, 2023

Battle for Ukraine’s Bakhmut Reaches Highest Intensity Yet; Power Station Strike Knocks Out Electricity in Russian Border Region; Ukrainian Losses From War Well Below Russian Ones; Ukraine Downs Russian Su-25 Aircraft, LIVE UPDATES and MORE

Photo: ADAM TACTIC GROUP/REUTERS
WSJ: Battle for Ukraine’s Bakhmut Reaches Highest Intensity Yet
Russian forces are advancing block by block as Ukraine seeks to inflict the maximum losses on the enemy
Heavy fighting gripped the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut Sunday, as Russia claimed small advances while Ukraine said the intensity of the battle had reached its highest level yet.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said that Wagner paramilitaries had advanced a few blocks on the northern and southern edges of the city. The Ukrainian military said it had repelled Russian attacks in and around the city, Russia’s main immediate target in the country.
“Our soldiers are doing everything to grind down the enemy’s fighting capacity in bloody and brutal battles,” Serhiy Cherevatiy, a Ukrainian military spokesman, told Ukrainian television.
The battle for Bakhmut, a city of some 70,000 before Russia’s invasion, has become one of the fiercest of the war, as Moscow has thrown tens of thousands of troops, many of them convicts recruited by Wagner, into frontal assaults. Despite heavy losses, they have gradually chipped away at Ukraine’s control of the city.
Russia has Ukrainian forces hemmed in from the north, south and east with only one decent supply route. In recent days, Russian troops have made a fresh thrust inside the city, cutting further into the area held by Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian troops are holding on, despite heavy losses of their own. Ukrainian commanders say they want to wear down Russian forces and buy time to prepare for an offensive of their own in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Ukraine and Russia traded accusations of shellings of civilian areas. Ukraine said two teenagers were killed in the southern Mykolaiv region and a church was severely damaged in the Zaporizhzhia region. Russia said a woman was killed by a Ukrainian in the occupied eastern city of Donetsk. --->READ MORE HERE
Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
WSJ: Power Station Strike Knocks Out Electricity in Russian Border Region
An alleged Ukrainian drone attack hits Belgorod while heavy fighting rages in Bakhmut
Fires erupted at a power station in the Russian border region of Belgorod overnight, a blaze that left part of the regional capital without power and that Russian military correspondents attributed to a Ukrainian drone attack.
“The cause of this is the actions of our enemies,” wrote Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov on Russian social-media platform VK. “The most important thing is that no one was injured,” he said.
Moscow has blamed Ukraine for a string of cross-border strikes which have hit Russian installations, including a fuel depot and ammunition warehouse last year, threatening to expand the conflict beyond Ukraine. Kyiv has also carried out attacks on Russian military targets on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Ukrainian officials on Monday didn’t comment on the fires in Belgorod.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov has previously threatened that Moscow would retaliate against cross-border strikes by launching attacks on Ukraine’s decision-making centers, including Kyiv.
Since early spring, Russia has been pressing an offensive, making limited gains, most notably in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where Kyiv says fighting has reached its most intense level yet. Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers to injury or death in Bakhmut, where Moscow’s troops have launched relentless attacks that have won them inching gains inside the city and cut Ukrainian troops off from the north, east and south. Kyiv’s forces have only one reliable artery to resupply troops inside the city. --->READ MORE HERE
Follow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:

+++++Russia-Ukraine News LATEST UPDATES: (REUTERS) (AP) (NY POST) and (WSJ)+++++

+++++Ukrainian losses from war well below Russian ones, Minister Reznikov says+++++

+++++General Staff: Ukraine downs Russian Su-25 aircraft+++++

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