Is the fate of Bakhmout in eastern Ukraine being played out? The Russian paramilitary group Wagner claimed, Monday, April 3 at night, the capture of the town hall of this city of Donbass, giving this conquest a legal meaning.
“In the legal sense, Bakhmout has been captured. The enemy is concentrated in the western areas,” Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Telegram. A video accompanying his message shows Mr. Prigojine waving a Russian flag with an inscription in honor of Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian military blogger who was a staunch supporter 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,” 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, the Ukrainian army claimed the opposite. “The enemy did not stop their assault on Bakhmout. However, the Ukrainian defenders bravely hold the city, repelling numerous enemy attacks,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on its Facebook page on Sunday evening.
A symbolic 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 the battle for Bakhmut is key to containing Russian forces across the entire eastern front, though analysts say the city’s strategic importance is 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, Marinka and Bakhmout. Especially Bakhmout! It’s especially hot out there today! said Mr. 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.
Six dead in Russian bombing
About 27 km from Bakhmout, in Kostiantynivka, a Russian bombardment on Sunday killed six people, three men and three women, and injured eleven, according to Ukrainian authorities. It was “just living quarters”, “ordinary civilians from an ordinary city in the Donbass” who were targeted, President Zelensky reacted.
Journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) saw a large crater in a courtyard and shattered windows from the ground floor to the upper floors in two fourteen-storey buildings, while the roofs of neighboring houses were shattered . Police say Russia carried out a “massive attack” in the morning, including 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 affected 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 seeing the damage done to her apartment on the ground floor of a Soviet-era building. She was also not at home when the explosions happened. “The interior doors and the front door were blown out. An internal dividing wall has broken down. There’s not a single window left,” she explained.