Russian troops attacking the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut are making difficult progress due to the resistance of Ukrainian troops and an extensive network of defensive fortifications, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner paramilitary group, said on Tuesday, The Moscow Times reported.

In an interview with the state news agency RIA Novozyn, Prigozhin said that in Bakhmut, the hottest spot on the front line at the moment, there is a “fortress in every house.”

“Boys fight for every house, sometimes for more than a day. Sometimes they need weeks to seize the house,” said the businessman nicknamed “Putin’s cook.”

Mercenaries from Wagner’s group, including prisoners recruited from prisons in the Russian Federation, led an assault on the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast that lasted nearly eight months and intensified in early winter as the Russian military command was apparently pressured to achieving victory. on the battlefield

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said last week that Russia had reached an impasse at Bakhmut, with “several indicators supporting the assessment that Russian forces around Bakhmut have reached their peak,” as senior Ukrainian officials visit. seamless font line.

The head of the Main Directorate of Military Intelligence (GUR) of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov visited Bakhmut on December 27-28 and was geolocated at least 600 meters from the previously recorded front line of Russian troops, and Volodymyr Zelenskyi was in this town, where heated disputes took place, on December 20. .

A week ago, Bulgarian journalist Kristo Grozev from the investigative site Bellingcat released a video in which members of the Wagner PMC mercenary group tell the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov that he is up to something bad, calling him a “bastard”, and the fighters are upset that they are missing artillery shells.

Bakhmut, damaged bay

Bakhmut was badly damaged during the heavy fighting, and there are believed to be fewer than 10,000 civilians left from a pre-war population of around 70,000.

The head of the group, Wagner, gave few assurances that Bakhmut would soon be conquered.

“This morning they took the house and went through the defense. But behind that house there were new lines of defense, and not just one,” he told RIA Novosti.

“And how many such lines of defense are there in Bakhmut? If we say 500, we probably won’t be wrong. Every 10 meters there is a line of defense,” Prigozhin said.

It is “unlikely” that Russia will penetrate Bakhmut in the coming weeks

An assessment by Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday morning that Russia is unlikely to carry out major development near Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, in the coming weeks.

This is partly because Russia is likely to conduct offensive operations in the area only at the platoon or group level.

In mid-December, Russian armed forces and Wagner mercenaries likely increased the frequency of infantry attacks around the Donetsk city of Bakhmut. However, according to British military intelligence, many of these operations were unsuccessful.

Over the past ten days, Ukraine has committed significant reinforcements to defend the sector, and the frequency of Russian attacks is likely to have decreased compared to the peak in mid-December.

Both sides also suffered heavy casualties, the British Ministry of Defense said.

For almost eight months, Russian troops and mercenaries from Wagner’s group, whose founder called the battle for the city “Bakhmut’s meat grinder”, have been fighting, so far in vain, for its capture.

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