"Over the past week in this [Bakhmut*] direction, units of the Southern group repelled 34 attacks by Ukrainian units, with the enemy losing more than 1,700 servicepeople, who were killed and wounded, as well as 16 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 34 vehicles and 12 field artillery pieces," the ministry said in a statement.
In addition, the Russian armed forces destroyed five Ukrainian military aircraft at an airport near the Ukrainian city of Krivoi Rog, the ministry added.
At the same time, Russian air defense systems shot down 270 Ukrainian drones and 19 HIMARS MLRS missiles in the past week, the ministry said, adding that the naval aviation and ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed 12 unmanned boats and three boats with Ukrainian landing groups in the Black Sea.
Besides, the Russian armed forces repelled eight attacks of the Ukrainian army in the direction of South Donetsk in the past seven days, as a result of which over 1,100 Ukrainian servicepeople were killed or wounded. About 15 armored vehicles, 22 vehicles and seven artillery pieces were destroyed.
In the Zaporozhye direction, the Russian army repelled 18 attacks by the Ukrainian military.
*In 2015, Artemovsk was renamed as Bakhmut as part of the Kiev regime's "de-communization" policies and the overall bid to distance it from Russia and shared Russo-Ukrainian history.