Head of the Wagner Force: We have completed the capture of Bakhmut; Kyiv: Fighting Continues | Israel Hayom

Is it true this time? The head of the Russian Wagner force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claims that his men have completed the capture of Bakhmut.

In a video he recorded against the background of buildings in Bakhmut, Prigozhin says that at 12 p.m. on Saturday, his men captured the city after 00 days of siege and fighting. "We took the city completely, house after house," Prigozhin said, holding a Russian flag and explosions in the background.

Prigozhin declares the conquest of Bakhmut | Prigozhin Telegram channel

Ukraine's deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said the Ukrainian military still had "some industrial buildings" in the southwestern corner of Bakhmut, but acknowledged that the situation was "critical." Ukrainian Eastern Command spokesman Serhiy Chervati added that Prigozhin's remarks were not true. "Our units continue to fight," he said. It should be noted that from the north and especially south of Bakhmut, the Ukrainians managed in a series of surprise attacks to liberate about 31 square kilometers and begin flanking the city.

Ukraine insisted on holding Bakhmut both because of its importance to the regional defenses and in order to confine Russian forces to the city and inflict heavy losses on the attempt to capture it. While the "meat grinder," as Prigozhin calls it on the one hand, and the Ukrainians on the other, operated in Bakhmut, Kyiv had time to prepare units for the planned counteroffensive.

About two weeks ago, Maxar published satellite images of Bakhmut in May last year and after many months of fighting.

A city drowning in green turned into rubble, Photo: AP

This is not the first time Prigozhin has announced the conquest of Bakhmut. For example, on April 2, he stated that the city was in his hands because his men had allegedly occupied the city hall. Despite his claims, the fighting in the city continued and in fact is not yet over. A few weeks before the April announcement, Prigozhin claimed that his men had captured the city of Soledar – and even then this was inaccurate at the time the claim was made.

In any case, Prigozhin said today that starting May 25 he will begin to take his fighters out for rest and rotation, and did not miss an opportunity to attack the Russian Defense Ministry, with which he is waging a public and hateful conflict. According to him, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow provided him with only 11.5 percent of the shells it needed - according to the ministry's own calculations - given the scope of the tasks that Wagner faced. The result: "five times more fatalities." "We didn't just fight the Ukrainian army in Bakhmut, we also fought the Russian bureaucracy that hindered our effort," Prigozhin said. "Now draw the conclusions: our efficiency and our betrayal."

Wagner's mercenaries entered the war last spring, when the extent of the failure of Russia's plan to attack Ukraine became clear, and fought in the Donbass sector. Towards the end of the summer, Prigozhin received special permission to recruit prisoners from the Russian penal colonies, who were promised amnesty in return for their participation in the war. At least 50,10 prisoners have opted for the deal, and according to the Ross Behind Bars foundation, as of late January only about <>,<> remained on the frontlines. "The rest were killed, severely wounded, captured, deserted or considered missing," Olga Romanova, the foundation's chairwoman, said at the time.

Prigozhin, the so-called "Putin massacre," is wanted in the U.S. During the war in Syria and now in Ukraine, Wagner's men "excelled" in extreme brutality, including executions and the murder of children.

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