Two of Putin’s commanders killed as Ukraine launches fresh Bakhmut offensive

Two of Vladimir Putin’s military commanders have been killed in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s military said, as it warned of a renewed effort by Kyiv’s forces to break through in the frontline city of Bakhmut.

With Moscow’s forces believed to have been forced to concede bitterly-fought gains in a haphazard retreat in the Donetsk city over recent days, Russia’s defence ministry announced that two of colonels were among the dead.

Colonel Vyacheslav Makarov, commander of a motorised rifle brigade – which typically comprise thousands of troops – was killed in Bakhmut while “personally [leading] the battle”, it claimed, adding that deputy commander of the military-political corp Colonel Yevgeny Brovko died with “multiple shrapnel wounds”.

As Ukraine continued to lay the ground for its bid to retake swathes of its territory, president Volodymr Zelensky conducted his own diplomatic offensive on Sunday as he visited counterparts in Berlin and Paris for the first time since Russia’s invasion.

Sitting alongside Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz, Mr Zelensky insisted that with the help of its allies Kyiv could secure an “irreversible” Russian defeat by the year’s end.

Having arrived in Berlin by Luftwaffe fighter jet just hours after Germany pledged its largest ever package of military aid to Ukraine, worth £2.3bn, the Ukrainian president then travelled to Aachen to receive the prestigious Charlemagne prize.

In his acceptance speech, at a ceremony attended by the EU’s Ursula von Der Leyen and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, Mr Zelensky accused Moscow of trying to turn back the clock of European history as he described the invasion of Ukraine as “Russia’s war for the past”.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin ahead of a dinner meeting with Emmanuel Macron in a surprise visit to Paris on Sunday evening, Mr Zelensky was quizzed on US intelligence leaks suggesting that he had considered trying to capture parts of Russia to use as bargaining chips in peace negotiations.

With Western governments insisting that their weapons must not be used to attack Russia, Mr Zelensky said: “We don’t attack Russian territory, we liberate our own legitimate territory, adding: “We have neither the time nor the strength. And we also don’t have weapons to spare, with which we could do this.”

“We are preparing a counterattack for the illegally occupied areas based on our constitutionally defined legitimate borders, which are recognised internationally,” he continued.

It came as Moscow-based newspaper Kommsersant reported that two Russian fighter jets and two helicopters – claimed to be highly rare models introduced just weeks ago to jam Ukraine’s air defence systems – were shot down “simultaneously” within Russia’s Bryansk region on Saturday, killing all of the pilots, in what some described as the air force’s worst day since the war’s outset.

While the incident sparked alarm among Russian commentators about Kyiv’s growing capabilities, Ukraine’s air force denied shooting down the four aircraft, which are reported to have been conducting a bombing raid in Chernihiv.

Risking the Kremlin’s anger, the powerful head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been involved in a rare and vicious public spat with Russian defence chiefs over the war effort in Bakhmut, suggested Russia may have shot down its own aircrafts.

“Four planes, if you draw a circle in the places of their fall, it turns out that this circle has a diameter (and all of them lie exactly in a circle) of 40km. Now go on the internet and see what kind of air defence weapon could be in the centre of this circle, and then build your own versions,” Mr Prigozhin said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s civilians, however, appeared to bear the brunt of Russia’s arsenal on Sunday, as Moscow launched a “massive” attack on Ukraine with Iranian-made Shahed explosive drones, which left more than 30 people wounded, according to the Ukrainian military.

Eighteen of the 23 drones were shot down, but those that got through, and wreckage from those intercepted, damaged 50 apartment buildings, private homes and other buildings, the military said.

Russia also hit the western city of Ternopil and southern city of Mykolaiv with rockets, wounding an unspecified number of civilians, while authorities said two civilians – a 59-year-old woman and a 65-year-old man – were killed by shelling in Kharkiv.

Additonal reporting by agencies