Ukraine’s Defense Ministry early on March 2 disputed Russia’s claim of taking the vital port city of Kherson where the River Dnipro flows into the Black Sea in the south. Defense Ministry spokesperson Iryna Zolotor said that according to a military brigade fighting in the city, “battles are going on now…The city is not captured totally.”
Ihor Kolykhayev, the mayor of Kherson located 545 kilometers south of Kyiv, said earlier in the morning that invading Russian forces had “seized a railway station and a river port.”
He added that “the situation in Kherson remains difficult” and that the “number of victims is currently unknown.”
Russian media earlier cited their country’s Defense Ministry saying the city was under its control.
As of the morning of March 2, Ukraine says 5,840 Russian military personnel had been killed or wounded since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in an ongoing war that Moscow started in 2014 by forcibly seizing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Ukraine also says it has destroyed 211 Russian tanks, 862 armored combat vehicles, 85 artillery systems, 40 multiple launch rocket systems, nine air defense systems, 30 aircraft and 31 helicopters.
Russia is not officially disclosing its casualties.
