“In the legal sense, Bakhmout has been captured,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner, said on his Telegram channel. According to him, the Russian paramilitary group took the town hall of Bakhmout, in eastern Ukraine, on Monday April 3, which has become a strategic issue in the war with Russia. “The enemy is concentrated in the western areas,” says Yevgeny Prigozhin.
A video accompanying his message shows Yevgeny Prigojine waving a Russian flag with an inscription in honor of Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian military blogger who was a staunch defender of the offensive in Ukraine and was killed by a bomb explosion on Sunday. This attack in the historic center of Saint Petersburg also injured 25 people. “The commanders of the units that took the town hall and the whole center will go and raise this flag,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said. “Here is Wagner Private Military Company, here are the guys who took Bakhmout. From a legal point of view, it is ours, ”he claims.
A few hours earlier, however, the Ukrainian general staff claimed to still hold Bakhmout. “The enemy did not stop their assault on Bakhmout. However, Ukrainian defenders bravely hold the city repelling numerous enemy attacks,” he posted on his Facebook page.
Similarly, the Russian military reported no progress in Bakhmout in its latest daily update on Monday. The spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, did not report any progress of Russian troops in Bakhmout, not even mentioning the name of this city.
A city of some 70,000 inhabitants before the war, Bakhmout has been the scene of particularly violent fighting for months. Due to the length of the battle and the heavy losses suffered by both sides, the city has become the symbol of the struggle between Russians and Ukrainians for control of the industrial region of Donbass.
Russian troops have advanced in recent months north and south of the city, cutting several Ukrainian supply routes and seizing its eastern part. On March 20, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner controlled 70% of Bakhmout. Ukraine believes that the battle for Bakhmut is essential to contain Russian forces on the entire eastern front, even if analysts judge the strategic importance of the city limited.
In his Sunday evening address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation in Bakhmout was difficult for his troops.
“I am grateful to our warriors fighting near Avdiivka, Maryinka and Bakhmout. Especially Bakhmout! It’s especially hot out there today! said Volodymyr Zelensky. The situation in the region “is still very tense,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said on Sunday, ahead of the Wagner chief’s announcement. “The enemy is trying to engage not only Wagner’s fighters, but also professional paratrooper units. Excessively high man casualties do not stop the enemy,” she added.
About 27 km from Bakhmout, in Kostiantynivka, a Russian bombardment on Sunday killed 6 people, 3 men and 3 women, and 11 injured, according to Ukrainian authorities. It was “just living quarters”, “ordinary civilians from an ordinary city in the Donbass” who were targeted, President Zelensky reacted.
AFP journalists saw a large crater in a courtyard and shattered windows from the ground floor to the upper floors in two 14-storey buildings, while the roofs of neighboring houses were shattered. Police said Russia carried out a “massive attack” in the morning, consisting of six S-300 and Hurricane missile strikes, “Sixteen apartment buildings, eight private residences, a kindergarten, an administrative building, three cars and a gas pipeline,” were hit in total, she said.
Lilia, a 19-year-old psychology student met outside her badly damaged apartment building with shards of glass still falling from the windows as she spoke, said she was “shocked”. “I was very lucky not to have been home at that time,” she said.
Nina, a retiree, was looking at the damage done to her apartment on the ground floor of a Soviet-era building. She was also not at home when the explosions occurred. “The interior doors and the front door were blown out. An internal separation wall has broken down. There’s not a single window left,” she explained.
Mortar fire also killed two people in the Sumy region (northeast), according to Volodymyr Zelensky.
