Head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force says his troops’ position could be in peril due to a lack of ammunition

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Ukrainian forces have continued to defend the besieged city of Bakhmut, as the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force said the position of his troops could be in peril because of their lack of ammunition.

The battle for Bakhmut, which is still under Kyiv’s control, has raged for seven months, with thousands of people killed and hundreds of buildings collapsed or charred. The few remaining civilians have been confined to basements for months with no running water, electricity or gas.

Ideas that future conflicts would be economic or fought in cyberspace have been proved wrong

It was Boris Johnson who declared, in November 2021, four months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that “the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on the European landmass … are over”. Today, dozens of destroyed Russian tanks dot Ukraine’s eastern Donbas fields near Vuhledar, smashed, rusting emblems of a traditional heavy warfare that has returned to Europe.

Events have moved fast since Russia invaded last February, but it is worth restating how far planning for conventional war had gone out of fashion before then. Although it was recognised that Russia was a threat, the dominant military thinking was that the goal of authoritarian regimes was “to win without going to war”, as then chief of general staff Sir Nick Carter said in September 2020.

Fighting in Bakhmut’s streets but Russia has not taken city, says Ukraine, as civilian casualties rise; families evacuated from Kupiansk amid shelling

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The Ukraine military said Russian troops were trying but failing to surround Bakhmut. Defenders had repelled numerous attacks in and around the besieged city in eastern Ukraine, the armed forces’ general staff added in its Facebook post late on Saturday.

There is fighting in Bakhmut’s streets but Russian forces “still haven’t taken control over the city”, its deputy mayor, Oleksandr Marchenko, told BBC Radio.

A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded in Bakhmut by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of the city on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops assisting them.

Russian artillery is reported to be pounding the last routes out of Bakhmut, aiming to block Ukrainian forces’ access in and out and complete an encirclement of the city. The UK Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian resupply routes there were becoming “increasingly limited”.

The death toll has risen to 11 from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-storey apartment block in southern Ukraine on Thursday, Ukraine’s emergency services said on Saturday.

Ukraine has ordered a mandatory evacuation of families and vulnerable residents from the frontline city of Kupiansk and adjacent north-eastern territories. The evacuation order was due to the “unstable security situation” caused by Russia’s constant shelling of the town and its surroundings, it said. Russian troops retreated from key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including Kupiansk, and Ukraine recaptured it last September.

Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, has urged speeding up the supply of equipment and support to Ukraine to give the Ukrainians “the tools they need to do the job”,

The Russian defence minister paid a rare visit to Moscow’s forces in Ukraine. In a statement on Telegram, Russia’s defence ministry said Sergei Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the eastern military district in the south Donetsk direction”.

The president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, has called for Ukraine to be allowed to begin EU membership negotiations this year, during a visit to the country on Saturday. She was “hopeful” the talks could starts this year, she said.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s description of the Russian invasion as “the war, which we are trying to stop, and which was launched against us using the Ukrainian people” was met with laughter at an event in New Delhi, India.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, saying President Joe Biden was “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”.

Regular army and Wagner units advancing into northern suburbs of north-east Donetsk city, MoD reports

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces, according to British military intelligence, with intense fighting taking place in and around the eastern city.

Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, while the regular Russian army and forces of the Russian private military Wagner group have made further advances into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence bulletin on Twitter.