Ukraine's military said it destroyed two Russian ammunition depots Wednesday in the area of Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region.

The offensive came three days after Ukraine said its army killed 400 Russian soldiers and wounded 300 more in a New Year's Day missile attack in Makiivka. Russia's Defense Ministry said its military suffered 89 deaths.

"Our rocket forces and artillery hit different targets, first of all, large concentrations of the enemy, personnel, as was the case this time, equipment, as well as warehouses with weapons, ammunition, and fuel," Serhii Cherevatyi, a Ukraine military spokesperson, told Ukraine state news agency Ukrinform. "Today, two warehouses with ammunition were destroyed in the Bakhmut area, one in the Avdiivka area and another in the Lyman area."

Cherevatyi added Ukraine used U.S.-supplied multiple-rocket launching systems such as HIMARS in its latest attack, the same types of systems it was said to use during the New Year's Day strike in Makiivka.

Bakhmut has been the scene of heavy fighting, with Russia using a private mercenary service, the Wagner Group, to help defeat a fierce Ukrainian resistance bolstered by heavy defense fortifications.

The Wagner Group is owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House has said the Wagner Group is struggling to find soldiers and is resorting to recruiting convicts from Russian prisons. The White House said intelligence findings showed Wagner had about 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 40,000 recruited convicts.

In its daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment on Tuesday, the U.S. Institute of War, a Washington think tank, said Prigozhin told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut are unable to break through Ukrainian defenses and Wagner's offensive operations are highly attritional because each house in Bakhmut is a "fortress" that Russian forces must clear building-by-building. The Institute of War reported it's the first time Prigozhin has said Wagner forces have effectively made no gains.

The think tank added Wagner soldiers told Prigozhin they were unable to break through Ukrainian lines in Bakhmut because of insufficient armored vehicles, ammunition, and 100mm shell supplies.

"This statement seeks to absolve the Wagner Group and Prigozhin of personal responsibility by attributing their failure to capture Bakhmut to the larger Russian resource allocation problems that Russian and Ukrainian sources have been increasingly discussing since late December," the Institute of War wrote.

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