Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian mercenary unit Wagner, said in a video released on Friday that the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine is “practically surrounded” by Russian troops and that Kiev forces only have access to one road in and out of the city. .
Prigozhin, in the same video, urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to withdraw his troops from the city, which Wagner had been trying to capture for months.
“The Wagner PMC units have practically surrounded Bakhmut, there is only one way left,” the Russian military leader noted in his message, urging Zelensky, to whom his message was addressed, to evacuate in time those “old people and children who remained and are fighting” in this city of the western Donbass.
The information, broadcast by CNN on Friday morning, spoke of an order from Kyiv to withdraw the reconnaissance group from the city after a very difficult night. with the destruction of the bridge Bakhmut and a cargo of Ukrainian supplies.
At the same time, the Ukrainians are strengthening their defenses west of Bakhmut, focusing on the nearby Chasovy Yar. New trenches have been created to effectively resist the Russian invaders after the latter occupy Bakhmut.
Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces have repulsed more than 170 shellings on five main sectors of the front, Ukrainian military commentator Oleg Zhdanov reported on YouTube on Thursday evening.
Mr. Zhdanov described how the Russians tried to encircle Bakhmut from the north, east and south, and said that the west is “probably the only part of Bakhmut where the initiative belongs to our forces and not to the Russian invaders.”
“Fighting in Bakhmut continues around the clock … The situation is critical,” Volodymyr Nazarenko, deputy commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, told Ukrainian radio NV.
“They don’t count their losses when they try to take the city. The task of our forces in Bahamut is to inflict as many casualties on the enemy as possible. Every meter of Ukrainian land costs the enemy hundreds of lives.”
Source: Reuters, TASS, CNN
Source: Kathimerini
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