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The British are said to have been last seen near the embattled town of Soledar shown here
Photo: Libkos / dpa
The private Russian military company Wagner says it has discovered the body of a British citizen who, like another, is missing in eastern Ukraine.
"Today the body of one of them was found and documents for both Britons were found on him," the statement said.
Wagner also published photos that are apparently supposed to show the passports of the two missing people.
The information could not initially be verified independently.
The military company did not say who the dead man was and whether the Wagner mercenaries, known for their brutality, had anything to do with his alleged death.
It was also unclear exactly where the dead body was found.
All it said was that the Brits had been missing from Soledar since last Friday.
The eastern Ukrainian city in the Donetsk region has been hotly contested in recent days.
On Monday, Ukrainian police said they were looking for two British volunteers who had disappeared in eastern Ukraine.
Accordingly, the two missing persons left the city of Kramatorsk in the direction of Soledar on Friday morning.
Unlike Wagner, Ukrainian police said the men had been reported missing on Saturday night.
Contact with them had previously been lost, it said.
The police said the two are 28 and 48 years old, but did not provide any information about their volunteer work.
According to Zelensky, battles for Soledar continue – Prigozhin disagrees
Meanwhile, both sides made different statements about the current situation in Soledar.
According to the General Staff in Kyiv and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the fighting continues.
"The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend that part of our city of Soledar [...] is some kind of Russian property," Zelenskyy said in a video speech.
With these claims of supposed success, Russia tried to deceive its population and "support the mobilization."
In addition, the "advocates of aggression" should be given further hope.
"But the fighting continues and we are doing everything we can to strengthen the Ukrainian defenses," said Zelenskyy.
The military leadership in Kyiv said that the Russian military was trying to attack both Bakhmut and cut off supply routes to neighboring Soledar.
"Fighting continues," the statement said.
Meanwhile, the head of the Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed that Soledar had now been completely captured.
About 500 Ukrainian fighters were killed, he wrote in a statement, without presenting any evidence.
On Tuesday he said the city was almost taken and around 500 Ukrainian soldiers were trapped.
The Russian military leadership has so far remained silent on the information.
They have not yet been independently verified.
kko/dpa