The Ukrainian military claimed it was still in control of Bakhmut.
The clarification follows the announcement made yesterday evening by the head of the Wagner mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin that he had conquered the town in Donbass, which has long been the scene of furious fighting.
"The enemy has not stopped its assault on Bakhmut. However, the Ukrainian defenders bravely defend the city, repelling numerous enemy attacks," the Ukrainian General Staff wrote on its Facebook page.
Moscow presides over the UN Council, 'slap the world'
The exhausting battle for Bakhmut, according to the Wagner mercenary company, has officially ended.
The announcement was made in the middle of the night by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who posted a video in which he claimed that the Russian flag had been hoisted over the municipal administration building of the town in Donbass, which for months has been the scene of furious fighting with the Ukrainians.
"Technically, we control the city", while the "enemy remained in the western quarters", added 'Putin's chef'.
With an even more blatant gesture: dedicating this victory to the ultra-nationalist blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, killed a few hours earlier in an attack in a St. Petersburg café.
The two were considered close,
united by the harsh and repeated criticism leveled against the military commands of Moscow for the scarce successes in the offensive in Ukraine.
Prigozhin's announcement came after Kiev revealed it has a 12-point plan to retake Crimea.
The head of the national security council Oleksy Danilov outlined the main stages starting from the demolition of the Kerch bridge that connects the peninsula to Russia.
The plan emerges on the eve of the announced spring counter-offensive with which the Ukrainian commanders aim to break through the Russian lines, while the Moscow forces are given at times in difficulty.
The signs of failure indicated by the intelligence, however, do not seem to date to be such as to cause significant changes in the balance on the ground.
Thus the 'plan for the Crimea'
takes on a more political than military value at the moment: in the hope of scoring an advantage on the battlefield and then proceeding with a series of measures that the Kiev government intends to adopt once it has regained control of the peninsula unilaterally annexed by Vladimir Putin in 2014. From the destruction of the strategic Kerch bridge, which cuts the homonymous strait in the Black Sea - already damaged by a truck bomb last October - to the sanctions against the Ukrainians who worked for the administration appointed by Moscow, such as loss of pension or being barred from public sector employment up to actual criminal convictions.
Furthermore, according to the plan illustrated by Danilov,
all Russian citizens who moved to Crimea after 2014 should be deported and all real estate deals made under Russian rule cancelled.
A perspective that also refers to the scenario pursued by Kiev, when it affirms - as reiterated up to now - that it does not intend to start negotiations with the Russian Federation except with the return to the 1991 borders. At the front, the Ukrainian forces are preparing to use the new western military equipment to launch the spring counter-offensive and which the latest indications also indicate as imminent.
Supplies, such as tanks, which could be used to hold the defense - albeit exhausted - of the city of Bakhmut, despite the Wagners' proclamations of victory.
Furthermore, according to the Armed Defense Forces, the
Russian army was forced to withdraw from some positions in the direction of Donetsk, right where Ukrainian troops are setting up defensive positions.
Failures and failures of Vladimir Putin's forces in Donbass also underlined by the American think tank Institute for the study of the war, which could also herald changes in military leadership.
"Russian, Ukrainian and Western sources noted that the Russian winter offensive failed to achieve the Kremlin's goals of capturing all Donetsk and Lugansk regions by March 31" as they had planned, writes in its latest ISW report, thus specifying that "Russia could soon carry out a sort of reshuffle of its high-level military command due to the failed winter offensive" in Ukraine.
L'
