Ukraine Claims It Killed 800 Russian Soldiers In Latest Strike

800 Russian soldiers, one aircraft, a helicopter, and three tanks were destroyed over the past day, Ukraine's defence ministry said.

Representational Image

Ukraine’s military on Thursday claimed that it killed 800 Russian soldiers on Wednesday mostly in fighting in the Donetsk region, reported Reuters. During its regular morning roundup of the fighting, Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were focused on an offensive in the Bakhmut sector and its attack in the Avdiivka and Kupiansk sectors were unsuccessful.

800 Russian soldiers, one aircraft, a helicopter, and three tanks were destroyed over the past day, it said. 

The ministry also reported an unspecified number of civilian casualties as a result of Russian air, missile and rocket attacks on the largely ruined, Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut and two other cities in the Donetsk region - Kostiantynivka and Kurakhove.

Russia, however, denies targeting civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. 

A senior U.S. administration official on Wednesday gave a sobering assessment of fighting in the Donetsk region, especially around Bakhmut.

"The fighting is still quite hot ... what we're seeing in Bakhmut we should expect to see elsewhere along the front that there will be continued fighting in the coming months," the official said.

Ukraine inflicted heavy losses on their adversaries and Russia was building up its forces in the region, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his evening video address. 

Meanwhile, Yegeny Balitsky, the governor of the Russian held Zaporizhzhia region said that the Ukrainian artillery killed five people and wounded 15 including four emergency workers, Russia's TASS news agency reported.

The claim comes just days after Ukraine said that it killed hundreds of Russian soldiers in an attack on a school in the Donetsk region. Meanwhile Moscow said that the missile strike had killed 89 of its servicemen, significantly raising the reported death toll which they earlier said was 63. 

In a rare public display of anger and grief, Russians gathered in Samara Oblast and morned the loss of troops in the attack.