Moscow is usually silent about casualties. But now the Ministry of Defense has reported the deaths of two commanders in eastern Ukraine. But not without also pointing to successes.
In a rare move, Russia’s Defense Ministry has reported the deaths of two senior Russian military commanders in fighting in eastern Ukraine. The dead are the commander of the 4th motorized rifle brigade, Vyacheslav Makarov, and the deputy commander of the army corps for military-political work, Yevgeny Brovko, a ministry spokesman said on Sunday. Both commanders were killed when Russian troops repulsed Ukrainian attacks.
The Russian Defense Ministry rarely comments on Russian losses in the military offensive in the neighboring country that has been going on for almost 15 months.
The ministry reported on Sunday ongoing fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Ukrainian troops made “massive attempts” to break through the Russian defense lines north and south of Bakhmut. However, all Ukrainian attacks were repelled.
Russia reports successful attacks on Ukrainian positions
The ministry also said that Russian airstrikes on the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil and the town of Petropavlivka in central Ukraine had hit warehouses with western-supplied weapons and Ukrainian army positions. Russia has carried out attacks with “high-precision long-range weapons” on positions of the Ukrainian army and on camps “with ammunition, weapons and military equipment received from Western countries”. “All targets were hit,” it said.
The Russian attacks came during the performance of Ukrainian duo Tvorchi at the European Song Contest on Saturday night. “Our hometown was bombed while we sang about our steel hearts, inflexibility and our will on the ESC stage,” the two musicians wrote on the Internet. They dedicated their performance to “all the cities of Ukraine that are shelled every day”.
Source: Stern
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