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Ukraine may pull forces back in Lugansk direction due to huge casualties — LPR official

According to Vitaly Kiselyov, an aide to the interior affairs minister of the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Ukrainian armed forces are suffering casualties equal to about a battalion per day near Artyomovsk and Soledar

LUGANSK, December 9. /TASS/. The command of the Ukrainian armed forces might withdraw their units stationed in the Lugansk direction over a heavy toll of casualties among their military personnel, Vitaly Kiselyov, an aide to the interior affairs minister of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), told TASS on Friday.

"In the Lugansk operational tactical direction - Svatovo, Kremennaya, Lisichansk, Artyomovsk and Soledar - the enemy is suffering huge casualties, and there are already calls to pull the troops back towards Kramatorsk and Slavyansk in order to replenish them with draftees from western Ukraine and again lead them into a meat grinder named ‘the Donbass Blitzkrieg’, as they call it," he said.

According to Kiselyov, the Ukrainian armed forces are suffering casualties equal to about a battalion per day near Artyomovsk (the Ukrainian name of the city is Bakhmut) and Soledar.

Earlier, Andrey Marochko, a spokesman for the LPR People’s Militia, said that foreign mercenaries were refusing to go and fight near Artyomovsk, where Ukrainian troops suffer huge casualties daily, but Kiev was luring them there by deception.