headlines: Russia Steps Up Attacks on Civilian Areas, Even With Advance Paused
articles: Russia and Ukraine keep the numbers of battlefield dead and wounded careful secrets, but the British military recently estimated the number of dead Russians at 25,000, with tens of thousands more wounded or simply exhausted after almost five months of war. That is far more than the roughly 15,000 the Soviet Union lost in its nine-year war in Afghanistan.
  
  Even by conservative estimates, tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers have died.
  
  Ukraine also faces a manpower problem, but its officials have pleaded loudest for help with their primary disadvantage: heavy weapons and ammunition to counter Russia’s strategy of long-range strikes on homes, malls and transit centers, as well as troops.
  
  In Chasiv Yar, where the apartment building was hit, one young man was trapped for more than 20 hours, pinned under the rubble. On Sunday evening, he was pulled out by rescuers, who quickly covered him with a blue blanket and gently placed him on a stretcher.
  
  He was one of nine people saved from the complex so far, officials said. It was unclear whether anyone else was alive.
  
  “My grandmother was here,” one neighbor said, before pointing into the pile of rubble.
  
  “That’s her bed,” he said. “I hope they will find her, and I can give her a funeral.”
  
  Carlotta Gall and Kamila Hrabchuk reported from Bakhmut, Ukraine, and Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London. Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Alan Yuhas from New York.