The owner and head of the PMC "Wagner" Yevhen Pryhozhyn, which is fighting on the territory of Ukraine, informed that they "legally took Bakhmut."
Pryhozhynʼs press service published a video in which he allegedly raised the Russian flag near the Bakhmut administration building.
"April 2, 2023, 23:00 exactly. Behind me is the city administration building. We placed the Russian flag with the inscription "In good memory of Vladlen Tatarskii" and the flag of the PMC "Wagner" at the city administration of Bakhmut. Legally, Bakhmut is taken. The enemy is concentrated in the western regions," Pryhozhyn noted.
The Presidentʼs Office (OP) urged not to react to Yevhen Pryhozhynʼs statement about the capture of Bakhmut.The OP leader Andriy Yermak called his video a fake.
- The defense of Bakhmut has actually been going on since July 2022, and fierce fighting has been going on there for the past two months. The occupiers concentrated their main forces on taking this city. Ukraine continues to defend the city, because this makes it difficult for the Russians to advance in other directions. Some of the roads to Bakhmut are still under Ukrainian control, although they are fired at by the occupying artillery. In the city, the Russians are slowly advancing towards the center from three sides at once — the fighting is already several hundred meters from the city council.