In its latest report released on Sunday, the UK Department of Defense said the impact of Russia’s ongoing heavy losses in Ukraine varied dramatically across the country.

The intelligence ministry briefing said the major cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg remain “relatively unscathed”, especially among members of the Russian elite. On the contrary, in many eastern regions of Russia, the mortality rate as a percentage of the population is “30-40 times higher than in Moscow.”

The report highlights that ethnic minorities are often the most affected. In the region of South Astrakhan, for example, about “75% of the victims are accounted for by a minority of Cossacks and Tatars.

Russia’s mounting losses reflect the loss of state control over the country’s intelligence services, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said. The think tank said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed “infighting in the Kremlin” and that the Kremlin had effectively ceded control of the country’s intelligence and Putin could not easily regain control.

Stuck in Bahamut

Russia’s advance appears to have stalled due to Moscow’s campaign to seize the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, according to a leading think tank’s assessment of the war’s biggest ground battle.

The Institute for the Study of War said there were no confirmed offensives by Russian troops in Bakhmut. Russian forces and units of the Kremlin-controlled Wagner paramilitary group continued to carry out ground strikes against the city, but there was no evidence that they were making progress, the institute said late on Saturday.

The report cited Serhiy Tserevaty, spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as saying that fighting in Bakhmut this week was more intense than last week. According to him, 23 collisions took place in the city over the past day.

The ISW report follows claims of a Russian offensive earlier this week. The UK Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that paramilitaries of the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group had captured much of eastern Bakhmut. The assessment emphasized that the Russian offensive would be difficult to sustain without greater loss of personnel.

The mining town is in the eastern part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, one of four regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last year. The Russian army launched an offensive on Bakhmut in August, both sides suffered heavy losses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed not to back down.

Fronts of the war

In the Donetsk and Kherson regions, Russian attacks killed at least five people and injured seven others the day before, local Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday morning.

The governor of the Donetsk region Pavel Kirilenko said that two people were killed in the area: one in the city of Konstantinovka and one in the village of Tonenka. Four more civilians were injured.

Local authorities in the southern Kherson region confirmed that on Saturday, Russian forces shelled Ukrainian-controlled territory 29 times, including residential areas of the regional capital three times. Three people were killed in the province and three others were injured.

In the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv, Chuguev and Kupyansk districts came under fire, but no civilian casualties were reported.

The head of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, Governor Vitaliy Kim, said Sunday morning that the city of Ochakiv, located at the mouth of the Dnieper River, came under artillery fire early Sunday morning. Cars were set on fire, private houses and high-rise buildings were damaged. No casualties have been reported.

Source: Associated Press.