The leader of the Russian paramilitary group speaks of "fierce fighting" underway Sunday, February 5 in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmout. Fighting that "takes place in the northern districts (of Bakhmout) for every street, every house, every stairwell," said Yevgueni Prigojine, whose men are on the front line there. “The Ukrainian armed forces are not retreating. They are fighting to the last man,” he said, quoted by his press service on Telegram.
The Ukrainian general staff confirmed without detailing the fighting and bombardments which are continuing in several points in the east of the country where Russian troops have made small territorial gains in recent weeks.
In Kharkiv, in the northeast, authorities reported two Russian strikes that injured at least five and damaged residential buildings. “The number of injured has increased to four people. A security officer of a higher education institution was also injured in a second missile strike,” said the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, Oleg Synegubov. He posted photos on Telegram of a building with blown windows and a partially collapsed roof.
According to the regional prosecutor's office, which also reported five injuries, Russian troops fired two S-300 missiles at the city.
On Saturday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation was "complicating" on the front, especially in Bakhmout, a city where most of the fighting has been going on for months and where both sides are facing heavy losses. He also cited Vougledar where Russian troops are on the offensive and Lyman, a town recaptured from the Russians during a Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2022. According to the governor of the Donetsk region in the east of the country, four people have been killed and eleven injured in the past 24 hours in the area.
The long-range weapons whose delivery has been promised to Ukraine by the West will not be used to target Russian territory but only the occupied areas, said Sunday the Ukrainian Minister of Defense.
Referring to "procrastination or reluctance" to deliver these weapons to Ukraine, Oleksiï Reznikov assured at a press conference that kyiv would win anyway, but that it "will cost more lives" .
