Trying to occupy Bakhmut in the Donetsk Region, the Russian Federation lost more than 100,000 of its military. The city itself has been destroyed to the ground.
U.S. President Joe Biden said this at a press conference after the G7 summit in Japan.
"They say about Bakhmut - they lost it or not. The truth is that Russia suffered losses of more than 100,000 people in Bakhmut. It will be hard to replace. It does not matter whether it is occupied or not - there are still not many buildings left. It is a substantially destroyed city. But they managed to shackle a lot of Russian troops, including Wagner Group," he said.
However, Biden believes that F-16 planes would not have helped Ukraine save the city. Similarly, they will not have time to help during the expected counteroffensive.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on May 20, the leader of the Wagnerites Yevgeny Prigozhin said that his mercenaries allegedly captured Bakhmut. The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed this information, but the Armed Forces denied it.
Leading world media wrote that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is at the G7 summit in Japan, said he was not sure the Armed Forces controlled Bakhmut. Later, Zelenskyy’s press secretary Serhii Nykyforov explained that Zelenskyy objected to the loss of Bakhmut. The President was asked that "the Russians say they took Bakhmut," to which Zelenskyy replied "I think not."
The representative of the Eastern group of troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Serhii Cherevatyi said that if the Russians completely capture the city, then they will not get a strategic advantage. At the same time, in the Russian Federation they react to the alleged capture of the city as if they had "taken Dnipro."
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