Biden said that Russia lost about 100 thousand people near Bakhmut

Russia has lost about 100 thousand people in the battles for the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, US President Joe Biden said during a press conference at the G7 summit in Japan.

Discussing the future of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Biden remembered Bakhmut, who has been fighting since the summer of 2022. The day before, Russia announced that it had completely taken control of the city.

“There are discussions around Bakhmut whether he is lost or not. The truth is that Russia suffered losses of about a hundred thousand people in Bakhmut. It's hard to make up for it. It doesn’t matter if it is occupied or not, it is still a ruined city,” the US President said. He did not report Ukraine's losses.

Earlier, the US and NATO did not provide accurate data on the losses of the Russian and Ukrainian sides in Bakhmut. In March, a CNN source in the North Atlantic Alliance said only that Russian troops lost five times more soldiers in the battles for the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region than Ukraine.

• According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, more than 203,000 Russian servicemen have died. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation last officially reported losses in the war in Ukraine on September 21, 2022. Then the department announced that 5937 Russian servicemen were killed.
• According to the BBC Russian Service and Mediazona journalists, who, together with a team of volunteers, are independently counting the dead in Ukraine based on public reports, more than 22,600 Russian military have died since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The actual death toll could be several times higher.