Ukrainian soldiers fire howitzers at the front near Bakhmut/Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters)
2023.03.11 Sat posted at 09:30 JST
（ＣＮＮ） A spokesman for the Ukrainian military told CNN that eastern Bakhmut remains “the hottest battlefield on the front line” and continues to come under heavy direct Russian fire.
Cerevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Army’s Eastern Front, said the fighting was still fierce, saying that 20 of the 188 attacks in the entire Bakhmut area that day were aimed directly at the town of Bakhmut.
Cherevaty also mentioned soldiers from the private military company Wagner fighting in the area. Currently, the third wave of Wagner fighters is being replaced by the Russian regular army, he said.
The first wave, which began in February last year, was made up of professional military personnel with ties to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of the Interior, a spokesman said.
The second wave consisted of personnel mobilized from prisons. These personnel were said to have been almost wiped out in so-called “human bullet charges” when Wagner attempted to break through the defensive line.
Now that Wagner’s troops have been replaced by the regular army, he said that the conflict between Wagner’s founder Evgeny Prigozhin and the Russian military leadership may have had an effect.
Prigozin claimed that Wagner’s soldiers had captured a village north of Bahmut on the 8th, but Cherebaty said he could not confirm the current situation in the village.
