Russian airborne troops are playing a greater role around Bakhmut as the Wagner group faces growing losses, Ukrainian military says

Russian missile attacks killed three in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostantynivka overnight, and shelling killed another two people in the northern Sumy region, officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have claimed that Wagner mercenaries are deporting residents of occupied areas of the city of Bakhmut to Russia. CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

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Ukraine says it has received the bodies of 83 of its fallen soldiers from the Russian side. Separately it has handed over an undisclosed number of seriously wounded Russian soldiers.

Ukraine had handed over to Russia “all the seriously wounded occupants, whose conditions made it possible to transport them and who were captured since the beginning of the large-scale invasion,” said the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday it is “critically important” to identify an object that was discovered next to the Nord Stream pipelines explosion site. 

"It is critically important to determine what kind of object it is, whether it is related to this terrorist act — apparently it is — and to continue this investigation,” Peskov said during a daily call with reporters. “The investigation must be transparent and inclusive.”

Earlier, the Danish Energy Agency invited the operator of Nord Stream, Nord Stream 2 AG, to take part in an operation to retrieve an object found near the gas pipeline. Peskov said that the Kremlin viewed it as positive news.

Some background: The incident, in which underwater explosions occurred before the pipelines burst in several places last September, remains a major point of contention between Russia and the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference at the BRICS Summit on July 27, 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

No decision has been taken yet on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in August, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"No decision has been made on this yet," Peskov told CNN.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are collectively known as the fast-growing BRICS economies.

Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges. The warrant relates to an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

South Africa is a party to the convention that requires the arrest of anyone for whom a warrant has been issued by the court.

The Russian Embassy in Tallinn, Estonia, on March 27, 2018. (Raigo Pajula/AFP/Getty Images)

Estonia has ordered the expulsion of a diplomat working for the Russian Embassy for “undermining Estonia’s security,” the Estonian foreign ministry announced in a statement on Friday. 

“The diplomat in question has been engaged in directly and actively undermining Estonia’s security and constitutional order, spreading propaganda that justifies Russia’s military action and causing divisions in Estonian society,” the statement from the ministry read.

The person in question was declared persona non grata after their activities were found to have violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. They were ordered to leave Estonia by March 29, the ministry said. 

Wagner mercenaries have begun deporting residents of the Bakhmut suburbs they control, the Ukrainian National Resistance Center (NRC) – an official body – said on Thursday.

“Militants forcefully take local residents to captured areas of Luhansk region, where they are filtered. After that, they are deported to Perm (Russia) and other remote regions of the Russian Federation,” the center said.

CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

“Locals are deported under the intention of evacuation. After that, they are assimilated in remote areas of the empire, because they are now dependent on the occupiers,” the NRC said.

Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, addressed these claims on Ukrainian television Friday.

“This is one of the regular crimes of the Russian Federation. There is nothing to be surprised at, because the entire military structure of the Russian Federation is a criminal ... All of this will be recorded, documented and handed over to the relevant national and international jurisdictions,” he said.

Russian airborne troops are playing a greater role in the fighting around Bakhmut because of the growing losses of the Wagner private military company, the Ukrainian military says.

“It is not that [Wagner] are withdrawing, but that due to heavy losses they have to be reinforced by units of the regular army of the Russian Federation, primarily by airborne troops,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, told Ukrainian television Friday.

Russian forces in the area are “making several dozen attacks every day. There were 32 firefights over the last day” in and around Bakhmut, Cherevatyi said, adding that there were also air strikes launched by both fixed-wing planes and attack helicopters.

“Artillery is a much bigger factor of influence on military operations there than aviation,” he noted.

Shelling by Russian forces overnight Thursday in the northern Sumy region killed two people and caused extensive damage in four communities, the Sumy regional military administration said.

Bilopillia, Vorozhbinska, Richkivska and Mykolaivka were struck by Russian shells, it said.

Bilopillia suffered 80 hits from rockets, 20 from artillery, and was hit by an airstrike, according to the military administration.

Two people were killed and nine injured, it added.

Residential and administrative buildings were also damaged and destroyed, it said.

A quick recap: Russian fighter aircraft also launched more than 10 guided bombs against targets in Sumy overnight, Ukrainian officials said earlier. While Sumy often suffers cross-border artillery attacks, it rarely comes under such concentrated aerial bombardment.

Rescuers work at a site heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Kostiantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on March 24. (State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Reuters)

Three people were killed in a Russian missile attack on the city of Kostantynivka in the eastern Donetsk region overnight, Ukrainian authorities said.

The city has been struck with increasing frequency by Russian missiles, especially the inaccurate S-300. Kostantynivka lies about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the embattled city of Bakhmut.

The Donetsk regional prosecutor's office said that at 1 a.m. local time Friday, the Russian army fired two missiles from an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system.

One hit the building of what’s known as an invincibility point — a place where civilians can access the internet, charge devices and receive other basic needs.

Two other people were injured, it added.