Wagner Group claims Russia now has control of Bakhmut, Ukraine denies – National | 24CA News
The head of the Russian personal military Wagner claimed Saturday that his forces have taken management of the town of Bakhmut after the longest and most grinding battle of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, however Ukrainian protection officers denied it.
In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin mentioned the town got here below full Russian management at about noon Saturday. He spoke flanked by about half a dozen fighters, with ruined buildings within the background and explosions heard within the distance.
However, after the video appeared, Ukrainian deputy protection minister Hanna Maliar mentioned heavy combating was persevering with.
“The situation is critical,” she mentioned. “As of now, our defenders, control certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in this area.”
Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s japanese command, informed The Associated Press that Prigozhin’s declare “is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.”
Fighting has raged in and round Bakhmut for greater than eight months.
If Russian forces have taken management of Bakhmut, they are going to nonetheless face the huge process of seizing the remaining a part of the Donetsk area nonetheless below Ukrainian management, together with a number of closely fortified areas.
It is just not clear which facet has paid the next worth within the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be within the 1000’s, although neither has disclosed casualty numbers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy underlined the significance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall might permit Russia to rally worldwide help for a deal that may require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.
Analysts have mentioned Bakhmut’s fall could be a blow to Ukraine and provides some tactical benefits to Russia however wouldn’t show decisive to the end result of the conflict.
Russian forces nonetheless face the big process of seizing the remainder of the Donetsk area below Ukrainian management, together with a number of closely fortified areas. The provinces of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk make up the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland the place a separatist rebellion started in 2014 and which Moscow illegally annexed in September.
Bakhmut, positioned about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar inhabitants of 80,000 and was an necessary industrial middle, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.
The metropolis, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, additionally was recognized for its glowing wine manufacturing in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late nineteenth century mansions _ all now decreased to a smoldering wasteland _ made it a preferred vacationer vacation spot.
When a separatist rebel engulfed japanese Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s unlawful annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels rapidly gained management of the town, solely to lose it just a few months later.
After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched try to seize Kyiv early within the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August however had been pushed again.
The combating there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives within the east and the south, but it surely resumed at full tempo late final yr. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining city of Soledar, simply north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the town’s suburbs.
Intense Russian shelling focused the town and close by villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to attempt to end off the resistance in what Ukrainians known as “fortress Bakhmut.”
Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to make use of the battle for the town to develop his clout amid the tensions with the highest Russian army leaders whom he harshly criticized.
“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin mentioned within the video on Saturday.
The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” in response to Ukrainian officers. Both sides have spent ammunition at a charge unseen in any armed battle for many years, firing 1000’s of rounds a day.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has mentioned that seizing the town would permit Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk area, one of many 4 Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
