Russian forces claim to have made a significant advance by capturing the central area of Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has become a symbol of Kyiv’s resistance against Moscow’s invasion. But Ukrainian authorities said they still retained control of other parts of the city.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, has claimed that his forces are in “legal” control of Bakhmut after planting a flag atop the ruins of its local government building located on Peace Street.
“In the legal sense, Bakhmut has been captured. The enemy is concentrated in the western areas,” said Prigozhin, seen through the green lens of a night vision device, in a video posted to Telegram late on Sunday. It showed Prigozhin, who has a habit of prematurely claiming battlefield victories, standing in combat gear among the building and ruins that the Financial Times recognised as Bakhmut’s city centre.
The battle of Bakhmut, which began with air strikes in May and intensified in early December as it evolved into heavy artillery duels and close-quarters combat, is the longest and one of the fiercest contests of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Prigozhin said the flag he planted was “in memory” of the influential pro-Kremlin war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed in a blast on Sunday at a restaurant in St Petersburg that the Wagner leader claimed to own and lent it to a “patriotic movement” to host events.
Ukrainian officials rejected Prigozhin’s claims of being in control of Bakhmut. Deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said that the situation was “very tense” but that the city was still under Kyiv’s control. Tweeting a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag emoji, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, described Prigozhin’s claim as “not even close to reality”.
The claim came a week after Ukraine’s military said that Russia’s offensive in Bakhmut had lost steam. On Monday, Ukrainian armed forces said they had repelled more than 20 Russian attacks in Bakhmut over the past 24 hours, a decrease compared with previous days, said Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the Eastern Military Command.
Still, the General Staff said: “The enemy does not cease its assault on Bakhmut in attempts to take it under full control.”
Ukrainian troops defending Bakhmut described to the FT first world war-style “human wave” tactics used by Russia’s forces and Prigozhin’s notoriously brutal Wagner mercenaries, largely composed of criminals sprung from prisons to fight in exchange for commuted sentences.
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Since early February, Russian forces attacking from the north and south have tried to encircle Bakhmut in a pincer move and cut off vital roads supplying Ukrainian troops inside the city, but they have been repelled. Now they are concentrated on attacking head-on from the east with artillery and then pushing through the rubble into central Bakhmut.
Each side has suffered significant casualties and expended significant military resources over the course of the fight. US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley last week called the battle of Bakhmut a “slaughter-fest” for Russian forces.
Analysts are worried that Ukraine’s costly defence could affect Kyiv’s ability to conduct its own planned offensive in the spring, when it will need a strong army and a huge amount of armour and ammunition to recapture lost territory.
Some western and Ukrainian military analysts have argued that the city is of little strategic significance and that Ukraine might be better off retreating to stronger positions to the west. But the city of Bakhmut and the Ukrainian army’s stand there has taken on great symbolic importance, inspiring a rock anthem titled “Fortress Bakhmut” and the rallying cry, “Bakhmut holds.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month ordered reinforcements to be sent to the city, a move questioned by some military analysts. He defended his move in an interview with the Associated Press last week, saying that if Russian president Vladimir Putin was victorious in Bakhmut, his army would continue to advance west and Ukrainian society would be demoralised.
The Kremlin has not had a major battlefield victory since last summer.
“If he will feel some blood, smell that we are weak, he will push, push, push,” Zelenskyy said of Putin.
