Russia’s Wagner Group has claimed “legal” control of Ukraine’s Bakhmut, but Kiev said its forces were still occupying the eastern city and described fighting there as “particularly hot”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary force, said Monday that his troops, engaged in months-long efforts to encircle and capture the bombed city, had flown a Russian flag atop their administrative building.
“From a legal point of view, Bakhmut has been taken. The enemy is concentrating on the western parts,” Prigozhin said in an audio message published on his press service’s Telegram account.
But there was no indication from Ukrainian officials that Bakhmut, a town of 70,000 before the Russian invasion began over a year ago, had fallen into Russian hands.
Prigozhin has previously made claims that were premature.
Ukrainian military leaders said Monday after Prigozhin’s video was released that enemy forces tried to take control of the city, but their forces “fended off more than 20 enemy attacks.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier on Sunday praised the defense of the city by Ukrainian troops.
“Thank you to our soldiers fighting in Avdiivka, Maryinka and Bakhmut,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “Especially Bachmut. It is particularly hot there.”
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar had previously described the situation around the city as “tense”. Ukrainian forces defended their positions, and Russian forces paid little heed to casualties as they attacked, Maliar said.
Al Jazeera was unable to verify the battlefield reports.
Ukrainian military commanders said their own counteroffensive – supported by newly delivered Western tanks and other hardware – was not far off, but stressed the importance of holding Bakhmut in the meantime.
Prominent Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the fighting engulfed the center of Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces had repelled 25 enemy attacks, but Russian forces had taken the AZOM metal works, which Ukrainian troops had defended for days.
“The enemy is attacking the city center from the north, east and south, trying to take complete control of the city,” Zhdanov, who has close ties to the Ukrainian military, said in a video posted on YouTube.
In Kostyantynivka, a town about 27 km (17 miles) from Bakhmut, a “massive attack” by Russian missiles killed three men and three women and wounded 11 others on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attack targeted residential areas populated by “ordinary civilians,” Zelenskyy said.
There was a large crater in a courtyard and windows from the ground floor to the top floors were smashed in two 14-story high-rise buildings, while nearby private houses had their roofs smashed in, the AFP news agency reported.
In Russia on Sunday, a well-known military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed by a bomb blast at a cafe in Saint Petersburg in what appears to be the second assassination attempt on Russian soil of a person closely linked to the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s state investigative committee said it had launched a murder investigation into the blast, which injured 25 people.
It was not immediately known who was behind the murder. Wagner’s Prigozhin said he “wouldn’t blame the Kiev regime for this,” but another top Russian official pointed the finger at Ukraine without providing any evidence.
An adviser to the President of Ukraine said “domestic terrorism” was breaking out in Russia.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, has condemned Western “hype” surrounding the arrest of US journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges and dismissed Washington’s recent call for his release.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his US counterpart Antony Blinken that Gershkovich was “trying to obtain classified information” when he was arrested this week.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is believed to be the first foreign journalist to be arrested for espionage in post-Soviet Russia, and his arrest is likely to escalate the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West.
His arrest on March 30 has sparked outrage in the West and is seen as a serious escalation of Moscow’s crackdown on the media.
“The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the US and intimidate the foreign press that is still working in Russia,” the Wall Street Journal Opinion Committee said.
The White House has condemned the allegations as “ridiculous” and warned Americans currently in Russia to leave the country for their own safety.
Several other US citizens are in prison in Russia, including Paul Whelan, a former Marine who was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to a 16-year sentence on espionage charges, which he denies.