Russia Ukraine war latest news today: Putin’s soldiers abandon positions in Bakhmut in the middle of Kyiv’s counterattack

A Russian brigade has actually abandoned its position on a bridge in Bakhmut, enabling Ukrainian forces to catch it, Ukraine said.

“It’s official. [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s report about the flight of Russia’s 72nd Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade from near Bakhmut and the ‘500 corpses’ of Russians left behind is true,” Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade said in a declaration.

A Russian brigade is generally formed of a number of thousand soldiers.

This advancement was previously described by the chief of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries.

“Our army is fleeing. The 72nd Brigade pissed away three square km this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said, grumbling his soldiers were getting just 10 percent of the shells they required.

The Russian defence ministry has actually increase a plan to hire detainees to combat in Ukraine considering that the start of this year and it is most likely that approximately 10,000 convicts registered in April alone, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said today.

“From summer 2022, prisoners were the key pool of recruits for the Wagner Group private military company’s operations in Ukraine. However, the group highly likely lost access to the Russian penal system in February 2023 when its public feud with the [defence ministry] was escalating,” it said in its latest intelligence update.

The MoD said the Russian defence ministry’s detainee recruitment campaign is “part of a broader, intense effort by the Russian military to bolster its numbers, while attempting to avoid implementing new mandatory mobilisation, which would be very unpopular with the Russian public”.

Russian forces are preparing to leave more than 3,000 employees from the town housing Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor in the war-hit country’s southern part, threatening a “catastrophic lack” of workers, Ukraine’s state-owned Energoatom business said.

“Information was obtained that the Russian occupationists were preparing for the “evacuation” of about 3,100 individuals from the satellite town of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor,” it said in a declaration.

It included that by displacing thousands, Russian “occupationists prove their inability to ensure the operation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as there is now a catastrophic lack of skilled personnel”.

This comes as the Russian defence ministry and a Russia-backed main declared that their forces struck a Ukrainian ammo depot in the area.

American pop band Imagine Dragons have actually launched a video for their single “Crushed” shot on the frontline of the war in Ukraine.

Announcing the release on Twitter, the American rock band composed: “Our video for ‘Crushed’, filmed on the frontlines of Ukraine, is out now. It follows Sasha, a young boy who endured months of shelling in his town.

“Sasha’s story is heartbreaking, and there are thousands more like him who desperately need help. Even today, his family is without electricity and other basic utilities.”

Volodymyr Zelensky has actually established 2 military administrations in Kherson oblast.

The Vynohradove town military administration and Skadovsk city military administration were produced the other day.

Russia says ‘difficult operation’ continues as Bakhmut will be caught

The Kremlin explained the intrusion as a “extremely tough” military operation in the middle of enduring intend to catch Bakhmut and manage the Ukrainian city.

“The unique military operation continues. This is an extremely tough operation, and, obviously, specific objectives have actually been accomplished in a year,” Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov informed a Bosnian Serb tv channel.

“We handled to batter the Ukrainian military device a fair bit,” he included, mentioning Russian rocket strikes in Ukraine. “This work will continue”.

He said he believed that Bakhmut “will be caught and will be kept under control”, protecting the months-long grinding fight in the area as Russia “is not waging war”.

The UK is set to designate Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group as a proscribed terrorist organisation, it is understood.

The Times quoted a Government source as saying the move was “imminent” and most likely to be enacted within weeks after 2 months invested building a legal case.

Proscription would make it a criminal offense to sign up with Wagner, motivate assistance for it, show its logo design in public or attend its conferences.

Among other organisation on the Government’s proscribed list are the Islamic State, al Qaida and neo-Nazi group National Action.

It comes as Labour required ministers officially identify the Wagner Group a horror clothing after implicating it of devoting “appalling atrocities”.

Russia’s military operation versus Ukraine is “very difficult” however will continue, Tass news company pointed out Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as informing a Bosnian tv station on Wednesday.

Russia has actually been successful in seriously harming the Ukrainian military device and this work will continue, he included a long interview throughout which he duplicated a lot of Moscow’s talking points about the dispute.

Russian soldiers got into Ukraine in February 2022 in what Moscow calls an unique military operation and at first caught considerable quantities of area.

But Kyiv’s forces pressed back in 2015 and are now preparing another counteroffensive. Western authorities approximate more than 200,000 Russian soldiers have actually been killed or injured.

“The special military operation continues. This is a very difficult operation, and, of course, certain goals have been achieved in a year,” Tass estimated Peskov as stating.

Ukraine continues to shell eastern parts of the nation inhabited by Russia and Peskov said this showed the requirement to continue the dispute and push pro-Kyiv forces back.

“We managed to beat up the Ukrainian military machine quite a bit,” said Peskov, keeping in mind Russia had actually released many rocket strikes versus what he said were military targets throughout Ukraine.

“This work will continue,” he said. Ukraine implicates Russia of targeting generally civilian targets, a charge Moscow rejects.

Tributes have actually been paid to Arman Soldin, a reporter working for global news company Agence France-Presse (AFP) killed in a rocket attack near Bakhmut in Ukraine.

The 32-year-old video co-ordinator was with a group of its reporters taking a trip with Ukrainian soldiers when the group came under fire with Grad rockets near Chasiv Yar on Tuesday.

Russian forces have actually been attempting to catch the city for 9 months, making Bakhmut the focus of the war’s longest fight.

Poland is going back to utilizing its historic name for Kaliningrad, the Russian city and administrative area that rests on its border.

From now on, it will be designated on Polish maps as Krolewiec, based upon the suggestion of the federal government commission for geographical names abroad.

The Kremlin has actually responded madly: representative Dmitry Peskov called it a “process bordering on insanity,” surpassing Russophobia.

The city, previously called Koenigsberg, was delivered from Germany to the Soviet Union after the Second World War. In 1946 it was relabelled Kaliningrad, after Mikhail Kalinin, among the leaders of the Bolshevik transformation.

The Polish authorities mention that Kalinin was among 6 Soviet authorities who purchased the execution of more than 21,000 Polish detainees of war at Katyn and somewhere else in 1940.

They said the present name was synthetic, doing not have any connection to the city or the area, however the centuries-old name of Krolewiec became part of Poland’s cultural heritage.

The war in surrounding Ukraine has actually contributed to the enduring stress in between Russia and Poland, an ally of Kyiv which has actually been providing Ukraine’s military with weapons and pushing for more global support for Ukraine.