Vladimir Putin congratulates the troops on the capture of Bakhmut

Vladimir Putin congratulates and promises to award medals after the Wagner Group and Russia claimed to have captured Bakhmut. Ukraine did not comment on Putin’s statement.

President Vladimir Putin has promised awards to fighters who have distinguished themselves in combat, Russian news agencies reported midnight Sunday.

Not long ago, the Russian Ministry of Defense sent a message that Russia now has complete control over the Ukrainian city.

– As a result of the Wagner offensive and with the support of the artillery and air forces of our forces, the liberation of Artyomovsk is now complete, said the statement of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow shortly after 11 pm on Saturday, Norwegian time.

Artyomovsk was the name of the city during the Soviet Union.

A few hours earlier, the commander of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed that his forces were then in full control of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian side rejected his claim.

Ukraine has yet to comment on Putin’s allegations, which came several hours later.

– We took the whole town, house by house

– Today at 12 noon, Bakhmut was fully opened. We’ve taken the whole city, house by house,” Prigozhin said in a video message, appearing alongside a group of soldiers carrying Russian flags and banners bearing the Wagner symbol. The sound of explosions can be heard from a distance in the video.

Prigozhin also claimed that Wagner’s group would withdraw from Bakhmut from 25 May and hand over control to units of the regular Russian army.

Reuters was unable to verify Prigozhin’s allegations regarding his arrest. They were categorically rejected by the Ukrainian defense when it became known.

– this is not true. “Our units are still fighting in Bakhmut,” said Serhiy Shrivaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian forces.

Deputy Defense Minister Janna Malgar wrote earlier on Saturday on Telegram that there were still fierce battles in the city, and that Ukrainian forces were still holding their ground in one area. But she described the situation as “critical”.

– It is unlikely

The statement from Chief Wagner on Saturday seemed to contrast sharply with statements made late Friday night, when Prigozhin stated that an imminent invasion of Bakhmut was unlikely.

– It is unlikely that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow Bakhmut will be completely conquered, he wrote then in a post on the Telegram messaging service. He pointed to a suburb that had “an impregnable fortress formed from a series of blocks of flats” southwest of downtown.

Wagner led the months-long offensive on Bakhmut, which is seen as Ukraine’s longest and bloodiest war.

In early May, Prigozhin posted videos complaining about the lack of ammunition and saying that the group would withdraw from Bakhmut on 10 May. It doesn’t.

Reinforcements

At the same time that several reports indicate some Russian advances in the city itself, both Ukrainian and Russian sources assert that Ukrainian forces advanced on the flanks.

Britain’s Military Intelligence Service wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday that it was “highly likely” that Russia had deployed several battalions in the Bakhmut region in the aftermath.

The Russian leadership may still see the conquest of Bakhmut as a central short-term goal that could enable them to claim some degree of success in the conflict, they wrote.

Prigozhin himself admitted that Bakhmut, which had a pre-war population of 70 thousand people, had no particular strategic importance. Nevertheless, the city assumed great symbolic importance, not least because both sides of the conflict suffered heavy losses in the battles there.