'20,000 fighters lost'

RUSSIAN private army Wagner lost more than 20,000 fighters in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, according to chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

He said about 20% of the 50,000 Russian prisoners recruited to fight in the 15-month war died in the eastern Ukrainian city.

The figure was in stark contrast with claims from Moscow that it has lost just over 6,000 troops in the war, and is higher than the official estimate of the Soviet losses in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops between 1979 and 1989.

Ukraine has not said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Analysts believe the nine-month fight for Bakhmut has cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, among them convicts who reportedly received little training before being sent to the front.