The commander of the Russian military “Wagner” group said, on Thursday, that his forces had begun to withdraw from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, and hand over control to the Russian army, days after he said that Wagner’s forces had captured the destroyed city.
And Yevgeny Prigozhin, the millionaire owner of Wagner, said in a video clip posted on the “Telegram” application that the delivery will be completed by June 1. There was no immediate comment from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
It has not been independently verified whether Wagner’s withdrawal from the bombed-out city has actually begun.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Wednesday that heavy fighting was continuing inside the eastern city after a nine-month battle that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Prigozhin scored a valuable victory in Bakhmut, which Russia needed, according to Western observers, after the military operations in Ukraine lost their momentum.
Now there is the possibility of a Ukrainian counterattack using advanced weaponry provided by Kiev’s Western allies.
Ukraine’s top presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Thursday that a Ukrainian counterattack was already underway, warning that it should not be predicted as “a single event starting at a specific hour of a specific day”.
Podolyak wrote, on Twitter, that “dozens of different actions to destroy what he described as the Russian occupation forces were already taking place yesterday, are taking place today and will continue tomorrow.”
During the 15-month war in Ukraine, Commander Wagner repeatedly and publicly criticized the Russian military leadership, accusing it of incompetence and failure to adequately supply his forces as they led the battle of Bakhmut.
Wagner’s involvement in the capture of Bakhmut boosted Prigozhin’s prestige, which he used to articulate his personal views on the conduct of the war.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said that “Prigozhin … uses the perception that Wagner is responsible for the capture of Bakhmut to promote an unreasonable level of influence over Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.”
Prigozhin’s blunt statement about what he will do next week in Bakhmut came a day after he again strayed from the Kremlin line on Ukraine.
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2023-05-25 11:33:10
