Russian forces suffered more than 1,100 dead in less than a week of battles near the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, Reuters reported. “"In less than a week, starting from 6 March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone”, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an address. In President Zelenskiy’s words, Russian forces sustained 1,500 “sanitary losses”- soldiers wounded badly enough to keep them out of further action.

The commander of one of the units of Ukraine’s armed forces in Bakhmut, Denis Yaroslavsky, said for Espresso TV that the supply corridor is only 4 kilometers wide and there is heavy fight for every street in the city.

“The situation in Bakhmut is extremely difficult. The Ukrainians are throwing endless reserves”, said Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private military company Wagner. “The closer we are to the city center, the harder the battles, the more artillery works against us, and the more tanks”, Yevgeny Prigozhin further said.