WAGNER SAYS RUSSIAN FLAG RAISED OVER BAKHMUT’S ADMINISTRATION; UKRAINE DENIES

Mon 03 Apr 2023:

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian Wagner mercenary group, announced late on Sunday that his troops had flown the Russian flag over the Bakhmut, Ukraine, town hall.

“In a legal sense, Bakhmut has been captured. The enemy is concentrated in western areas,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel in a post.

In a video accompanying the post, Prigozhin could be seen holding a Russian flag inscribed in honour of Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed in a bomb attack in a cafe in Saint Petersburg on Sunday.

“The commanders of the units that took city hall and the whole centre will go and put up this flag,” he said.

“This is the Wagner private military company, these are the guys who took Bakhmut. In a legal sense, it’s ours.”

Wagner says Russian flag raised over Bakhmut's administration; Ukraine denies#Bakhmut #Wagner #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/K1TDaYlZuG

— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) April 3, 2023

Ukraine denies Wagner Group claim over Bakhmut

Ukraine says Russian forces are “very far” from capturing Bakhmut and that fighting continued around the administration building where the Wagner mercenary group claimed to have raised the Russian flag.

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command told the Reuters news agency that it was unclear where Russian forces had raised their flag and that they had falsely claimed to have captured the city.

“They raised the flag over some kind of toilet. They attached it to the side of who knows what, hung their rag and said they had captured the city. Well good, let them think they’ve taken it,” the official, Serhiy Cherevatyi, said by telephone.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that from a “legal” point of view, Bakhmut had been captured by Russia, an idea denied by Cherevatyi.

On March 20, Prigozhin had claimed Wagner units controlled 70 percent of the town.

The fight for Bakhmut is the longest battle of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.

Russian and Ukrainian forces have invested heavily in the struggle for Bakhmut, even though analysts say the city carries little strategic value.

Ukraine says the battle for the industrial town is key to holding back Russian forces along the entire eastern front.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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