A Ukrainian military unit said it knocked out an enemy infantry brigade from an area several square kilometers near Bakhmut, which appeared to confirm Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s claim that an elite Russian army brigade had escaped from that side. the front

Highlights of the war in Ukraine, day 442, LIVETEXT:

07:38The former chairman of Motor Sich, Vyacheslav Boguslaev, who is accused of cooperating with the Kremlin and the Russian defense contractor Rostec, asked to be included in the list of prisoners exchanged with Russia, Radio Free Europe reports, citing Boguslaev’s letter to the head of the President’s Office. Andriy Yermak of Ukraine.

Previously, the adviser to the President of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolyak, did not rule out that Boguslaev could be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war.

01:40 VIDEO Zelenskyi: Freedom, security and Europe must be returned to the entire Ukrainian land

01:08News from the Bakhmut Front: Ukrainian troops are gaining territory, and Prigozhin speaks about the danger of Wagner’s mercenary encirclement: “The flanks are collapsing”

A brief summary of recent events:

• Russian troops in Bakhmut were pushed back up to two kilometers in some areas as a result of the counteroffensive, reported the military commander of the Ground Forces of Ukraine. Prigozhin complained that his Wagner fighters had not yet received enough ammunition from the Russian Ministry of Defense to support their fight at Bakhmut.
• The war in Ukraine will increasingly be a battle between large numbers of ill-trained Russian troops with outdated equipment and smaller Ukrainian forces with better Western weapons and training, the country’s top NATO military official, Admiral Rob Bauer, said. “What we’re going to see now is that the Russians are going to focus — they have to focus — on numbers, on more recruits, and they’re mobilizing people — undertrained — and old equipment,” he said.
• Russia’s military operation against Ukraine is “very difficult,” but certain goals have been achieved, Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov said on Wednesday.
• The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey said that, in his opinion, the agreement on the export of grain through the Black Sea can be extended for at least another two months under the conditions when the representatives of the parties held the first day of negotiations in Istanbul. on the superstructure.
• Russian troops plan to evacuate more than 3,000 workers from the city that serves the occupied Zaporizhia NPP, which will lead to a “catastrophic shortage” of personnel, the Ukrainian state-owned company Energoatom said.
• EU countries have held the first discussion on new sanctions that will target Chinese and Iranian companies and limit exports to third countries for violating trade restrictions.
• The filling station of the Druzhba oil pipeline in the Russian region on the border with Ukraine was attacked, reported the Russian operator of the Transneft oil pipeline.
• The governor of the region said that two drones tried to attack a military facility in Russia’s Voronezh region, but failed. Russian air defense forces shot down an “enemy” drone in the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine, its governor said, adding that a gas pipeline and a house were damaged as a result of falling debris.
• Two Russian soldiers from Kamchatka in the Far East have been sentenced to two and a half years in prison each for refusing to fight in Ukraine, reports the human rights group OVD-Info.
• The Kremlin said that Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents was a “hostile act”. The Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Moscow, Dmytro Medvedev, proposed on Wednesday that Poland should return to the Russian Federation, “as the successor of the Russian Empire.”
• Russia has restored the visa-free regime for Georgian citizens and lifted the ban on direct flights between the two countries. Moscow’s decision is a challenge, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili said.
• Turkey has delayed a $600 million gas payment to Russia until 2024, two sources told Reuters.
• The Ukrainian military released a video mocking the appearance of the only Russian T-34 tank from World War II at the Victory Parade on Red Square.
• Prigozhin used the Victory Day celebrations to attack Vladimir Putin and question his views. A respected historian said that Prigozhin’s statements violate the unwritten rule about criticizing the “tsar”, that is, either Prigozhin will be “burned” or (if not done) Putin will be “finished off.”

—————-

• Wednesday’s events related to Russian aggression were broadcast LIVE on HotNews.ro