Russian officials on Saturday announced the death of yet another general in Ukraine, weeks after President Vladimir Putin announced the appointment of a new military commander, Aleksandr Dvornikov, to expedite a victory in Ukraine.

The news of Major General Vladimir Frolov‘s death was announced by the mayor of St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.

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“Today we say goodbye to a true hero,” St Petersburg Mayor Alexander Beglov said in a statement while attending Major General Frolov’s funeral at the historic Serafimovskoe Cemetery on Saturday.

“Vladimir Petrovich Frolov died a heroic death in battle with Ukrainian nationalists. He sacrificed his life so that children, women and old people in the Donbas would no longer hear the explosions of bombs. So that they stop waiting for death and, leaving home, say goodbye as if it were for the last time,” the Mayor added.

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Major General Frolov’s death, the circumstances of which were not immediately clear, marks the demise of yet another senior Russian military official in Ukraine, which has valiantly held out against the Russian invasion for well over a month now. According to the Daily Mail, Russia has now lost eight generals, and 34 colonels since the start of the war.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, several senior military officials on the Russian side have been killed in Ukraine, despite Russia’s superior military might and numbers.

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Russian forces, thus far, have been unable to capture any of Ukraine’s biggest cities, and reports, as well as Russian defence ministry statements, suggest that Moscow’s forces are intensifying their assault on the contested Donbas region in a bid to achieve some sort of victory by May 9, the day Russia celebrates the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Yet, the tide of the ongoing war has changed significantly since February: although Russia had moved quickly to lay siege to several cities across the eastern European country, Ukrainian forces have since recaptured several major regions and strategic sites, thereby putting Moscow on the backfoot.