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Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin shared this in a video on Saturday. Ukraine disagreed. “That’s not true,” said a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces. “Our units are fighting in Bachmut.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense describes the situation in Bakhmut as critical. “Heavy fighting in Bakhmut. The situation is critical,” said Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar on Telegram. Ukrainian forces controlled some industrial and infrastructure facilities in the contested area.
“Today, at 12 noon, Bakhmut was completely captured,” Prigozhin said earlier in the video. The head of the mercenary group announced that the city would be handed over to the Russian military. The Wagner forces will be withdrawing from the city from May 25, he says.
Ukraine does not want to give up Bakhmut
Prigozhin had repeatedly complained about the lack of support from the Russian armed forces and threatened to abandon his positions. In his video, which was distributed on Saturday, he again attacked Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov. They are responsible for the fact that five times more Russian fighters died than necessary.
The Ukraine does not want to give up the eastern city, which has been contested since late summer, in order to prevent the Russian troops from breaking through further inland. The city is the main part of the line of defense between the cities of Siversk and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, established after the Russian conquest of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk. Should the city fall, the route to the major cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk would open up for Russian troops. This would bring a full conquest of the Donetsk region planned by Russia closer.
Ukraine has been defending itself against the Russian incursion for more than 14 months. The city of Bakhmut in Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which once had a population of more than 70,000, has been the focus of fighting for months. The battle for the city, which is now primarily symbolically important, is the bloodiest and longest of the war so far.
Source: Nachrichten
