The military spokesman ukrainian, Serhiy Cherevatyidenied the head of the wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhinwho had ensured that the mercenary forces took the city of Bakhmut.
“That’s not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.”Cherevatyi told the news agency Reuters.
For her part, the Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister, Hanna Maliarreported “heavy fighting in Bakhmut”. “The situation is criticism”, he said in the messaging service Telegram.
“From now on, our defenders control some industrial and infrastructure facilities in the area and the private sector,” he added.
Prigozhin had earlier announced the seizure of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, besieged for 10 months by his paramilitary units.
“Today at noon the last redoubt of the neighborhood was taken in the city of Bakhmut. Samolioth (Airplane)”, he stated with a Russian flag in his hands in a video posted on his Telegram account, accompanied by several Wagner fighters.
Prigozhin noted that “the operation for the seizure of Bakhmut, ‘Bakhmut’s meat grinder,’ lasted 224 days”.
“It started on October 8, 2022 to give the battered russian army the opportunity to recover,” he added.
It is a bloody campaign that also revealed Deep disagreements between Wagner’s boss and the Russian Defense Ministrywhich he repeatedly accused of insufficient supplies of arms and ammunition and of allowing regular units to flee from the positions taken by the paramilitary group.
rats in a mousetrap
Whether or not the Ukrainian forces have abandoned Bakhmut, they have been slowly retreating inside it, towards clusters of buildings on the western edge of the city.
But meanwhile, to the north and south, they have made their fastest advances in six months into the surrounding area, wresting swaths of territory from Russian troops.
Russia has acknowledged losing ground in and around Bakhmut in the past week, though he has denied Prigozhin’s claims that the flanks around the city guarded by regular troops have collapsed.
kyiv claims that their objective in Bakhmut has been to lure Russian forces from other parts of the front into the city, inflict a large number of casualties and weaken the defensive line of Moscow elsewhere before a major planned counter-offensive.
“Wagner’s troops entered Bakhmut like rats in a mousetrap,” he said. Oleksander Syrskyicommander of the Ukrainian land forces, to troops on the Bakhmut front this week.
British defense intelligence said on Saturday that Moscow appeared to be redoubling their efforts in the battle around Bakhmut, moving more troops there even though they were in short supply elsewhere. It was very likely that Russia had deployed up to several low-reserve battalions to reinforce the Bakhmut sector, he said on Twitter.
Moscow has long claimed that the capture of Bakhmut would be another stepping stone in its advance towards the region of Donbas, which claims to have annexed Ukraine. It has made it the main target of a massive winter and spring offensive that has failed to capture any significant ground elsewhere.
But Prigozhin has acknowledged that Bakhmut, a pre-war city of 70,000, has little strategic importancedespite its enormous symbolic importance due to the magnitude of the losses in the bloodiest land battle in Europe since World War II.
(With information from EFE and Reuters)
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Source-www.infobae.com