As Russian military bloggers report significant advances by Ukrainian forces around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the head of the mercenary Wagner military group said Russian troops have abandoned their positions around the region, the BBC reports. The Kremlin denies it has ceded ground in its invasion of Ukraine.
The reports of Russian losses came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a consortium of European public service media that the anticipated counteroffensive is not in the immediate future.
“With [what we already have] we can go forward and, I think, be successful,” Zelenskyy said. “But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”