DONETSK, January 22. /TASS/. As many as 597 Ukrainian servicemen were killed in clashes with Donetsk militias at the Donetsk airport, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said on Thursday.

“A total of 597 army servicemen and troops of the National Guard were killed,” he told a briefing. “I am speaking only about those whose bodies have been retrieved from the vicinity of the airport and in the settlement of Peski. As many as 44 people have yielded themselves prisoner.”

He said that the DPR army had destroyed 49 Ukrainian tanks and 47 infantry combat vehicles and armored vehicles in retaliatory fire.

More than 1,500 Ukrainian troops were wounded and taken to field hospitals.