'There were three or four of their dead,' the 47-year-old said. One sapper named Volodymyr said he was on the frontline doing his job when his team found the bodies of Russian troops in an abandoned position. Troops given the responsibility to clear mines on the front line are called sappers. Since the mines forced commanders to slow the advance, the number of wounded arriving at his hospital has tapered off markedly. Landmines inflicted a colossal toll in the first month of the counteroffensive in June, said Oleksandr, an anaesthesiologist with the 128 Brigade who treats battlefield wounds at a front-line field hospital. Occupying Russian troops have sown landmines and booby traps across hundreds of miles of Ukraine's front, a tactic that Kyiv's commanders describe as the primary reason why their long-awaited summer counteroffensive has slowed to a crawl. Russia's defence minister, in his account of the fighting, said Ukrainian forces had made unsuccessful attempts to advance in several sectors in both southern and northern parts of the Donetsk region. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre.' 'The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. 'The enemy has prepared very thoroughly for these events,' he said. Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, said Russian forces had ample time in months of occupation to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields. The Institute for the Study of War has also reported Ukrainian troops have made progress in three areas near Bakhmut. Kyiv also says it has retaken areas near Bakhmut, an eastern city seized by Russian forces in May after months of battles.

Much of the Russian military activity has focused on air attacks including the strike that damaged grain infrastructure in Ukraine's Danube port of Izmail. Russian forces have made no headway along the frontlines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said late on Wednesday night in an update on its military progress.

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