Wagner Chief Claims Control of Bakhmut—Ukraine Calls BS

The head of Russia’s mercenary army in Ukraine, the Wagner Group, claimed to have seized total control of the long-besieged city of Bakhmut on Saturday.

“The operation to capture Bakhmut lasted 224 days,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader, said in a video posted to Telegram, according to CNN. In the video, Prigozhin stands in full military gear, flanked by soldiers holding Russian and Wagner Group flags and with bombed-out buildings looming in the background.

Ukrainian officials immediately called bullshit—though one conceded the situation is dire.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar disclaimed Prigozhin’s victory pronouncement in a Telegram post, but said the situation is bleak, CNN reported. Maliar said Ukrainian troops are still holding onto a district on the city’s western fringe, and that they “control certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in the area.”

A spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern command also dismissed Prigozhin’s claim, the Associated Press reported. “Our units are fighting in Bakhmut,” he said.

Prigozhin’s victory claim comes amid a head-spinning back-and-forth battle for control of the besieged eastern city, whose importance in the war is believed to be more symbolic than strategic.

On Thursday, both Ukraine and the Wagner Group described Russian military forces retreating from parts of the city’s north and south as Ukrainian troops advanced. Prigozhin claimed his mercenary army had moved forward despite abandonment by his military support, even as he issued pleas to the country’s defense minister to “not give up the flanks” as the Ukrainian army threatened to encircle him.

Now, Prigozhin—who has also called out the Kremlin for failing to supply Wagner with ammunition and supplies says he’s turned the tide.

“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut,” Prigozhin said in the video posted Saturday, according to the AP. “We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t immediately confirm or dispute Prigozhin’s proclamation of victory.

The fighting has lasted since last August and left the city in ruins. Both sides have incurred heavy losses, though the exact number of Russian and Ukrainian troops who have been killed in Bakhmut remains unknown.

As Prigozhin claimed victory over the city, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Japan to meet with leaders of the G7 nations and appeal for additional military support. The stop in Japan comes after Zelensky met with Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, urging them to weaken ties with Russia and lend their support to Ukraine.

In a war where both sides are competing for alliances and international backing, a symbolic victory over Bakhmut could prove a powerful tool for drumming up support.

Prigozhin has also used Bakhmut to make appeals to the Kremlin for greater support for his Wagner fighters, which include many convicts recruited from Russian jails and dispatched to the frontlines.