The Ukrainian military is preparing for an upcoming counteroffensive, with a top commander saying his forces’ ongoing defence of Bakhmut in the face of sustained Russian attacks is necessary to “buy time” for that push.

The remarks came as British intelligence said the frontline had shifted in the fight for Bakhmut – the longest and bloodiest battle of Moscow’s year-long invasion – but that any further Russian advance in the devastated town would be “highly challenging”.

Ukraine and Russia are both claiming hundreds of each other’s troops were killed over the previous 24 hours in the fight for Bakhmut, with a small river that bisects the town marking the new front line. The exact number of casualties is difficult to independently verify.

A Ukrainian military spokesperson, said that 221 pro-Moscow troops were killed and more than 300 wounded in Bakhmut.

Bakhmut: Russia’s losses amount to more than 500 dead or wounded in single day, Ukraine says

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Ukraine war: Bakhmut fighting ‘escalates’ amid fresh Russian push

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Russia’s defence ministry said up to 210 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the broader Donetsk part of the frontline. Ukrainian servicemen prepare to join the front line near Bakhmut in the Donbas region.

British military intelligence said on Saturday that Russia’s Wagner mercenary group had taken control of most of the eastern part of Bakhmut – an advance that the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed on Wednesday.

Three civilians were killed in Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Saturday, and another died in Donetsk, regional officials said. Reuters reported the governor of Kherson oblast, Oleksandr Prokudin, as saying three people, including an elderly woman, had also been wounded.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the three people killed in Kherson had gone to a store to buy groceries. “I would like to support all our cities and communities that are subjected to brutal terrorist attacks,” he said in a regular evening video address.

Russia has bombarded Ukraine more than 40,500 times since its invasion in February 2022, according to the Ukrainian interior minister, Ihor Klymenko.

The shelling had destroyed more than 152,000 residential buildings since the war began, Euromaidan reported Klymenko as saying. Russian missile strikes targeted “critical infrastructure” in Zaporizhzhia, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The strikes launched on Saturday were likely to have come from S-300 air defence missiles, the outlet reported the Zaporizhzhia oblast military administration as saying. – Guardian