By defending their ruins, Ukrainian forces are slowing costly Russian offensive efforts to extend Moscow's control over the entirety of eastern Ukraine's industrial Donbas region.
It became Russian President Vladimir Putin's revised target for conquest after his forces were beaten back from the capital, Kyiv, and northern Ukraine in the invasion's opening stage a year ago.
"See what they have done to it?" he said of Russian forces that have been pounding Bakhmut for months, slowly inching forward with heavy casualties to capture a prize that, if it falls, might allow Moscow to argue that the invasion is making progress. Although Russia has seized most of the Luhansk region that also forms part of the Donbas, the adjacent Donetsk region remains roughly divided between Ukrainian and Russian control.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported three civilians killed and four wounded in Russian strikes on Saturday. Vuhledar and its surroundings were also intensely shelled, he said. Further along the front line, in the southern Kherson region also split between Ukrainian and Russian control, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin reported two civilians killed and seven injured in 78 Russian strikes on the region on Saturday.
"Because I think what Russia is doing now is genocide of Ukrainians. And Ukrainians don't have another option but to win."-- Marking the anniversary of Russia's occupation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed confidence the peninsula's return to Ukrainian control would be part of an end to the war.
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