Casualties mount in Donetsk By Reuters

(Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia the two claimed substantial casualties in Ukraine’s Donetsk region as they fight for Bakhmut, with Kyiv fending off unabating assaults and a tiny river that bisects the city now marking the new entrance line.

Fighting IN BAKHMUT, KHERSON

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported Russian forces experienced experienced much more than 1,100 dead in the previous couple times battling along the Bakhmut portion of the frontline. Russian forces also sustained 1,500 “sanitary losses” – troopers wounded terribly plenty of to keep them out of further more motion, he included.

* Russia’s defence ministry explained on Sunday its forces had killed much more than 220 Ukrainian support associates in excess of the earlier 24 hrs in the Donetsk direction.

* A few civilians were being killed in Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Saturday, Zelenskiy stated, denouncing what he termed “brutal terrorist assaults” by pro-Moscow units.

* The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, which has led the assault on Bakhmut, mentioned his army will get started to reboot the moment the city was captured. “In particular, we will commence recruiting new folks from the regions,” Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed in a clip posted on Telegram channels connected with Wagner.

GRAIN Deal

* Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar claimed he thinks that a deal letting Ukrainian grain to be exported by using the Black Sea will be prolonged from its present-day March 18 deadline.

* Russia’s overseas ministry explained on Sunday that Russian representatives had not still taken aspect in negotiations on extending the Black Sea grain offer.

CHURCH, DIPLOMACY, WEAPONS

* Ukraine’s punitive actions against a department of the Orthodox church connected to Russia are element of a drive to reach “non secular independence”, Zelenskiy claimed. Ukrainian leaders have accused the lengthy-recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church of undermining Ukrainian unity and collaborating with Moscow.

* Ukraine’s overseas minister urged Germany in an job interview released on Sunday to velocity up supplies of ammunition and to get started teaching Ukrainian pilots on Western fighter jets.

* The European Union could before long best up the fund utilised for getting weapons for Ukraine by 3.5 billion euros ($3.7 billion), a senior EU formal reported on Friday.