The Ukrainian military has brushed aside claims by the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force that he will withdraw his fighters from the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, saying the mercenaries were holding firm and receiving reinforcements.
Ukraine’s military said on Friday that Wagner fighters were reinforcing positions in Bakhmut with the likely intention to try and seize the destroyed city before Russia marks the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II on May 9.
“We are now seeing them pulling (fighters) from the entire offensive line where the Wagner fighters were, they are pulling (them) to the Bakhmut direction,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on Ukrainian television.
In a video statement, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his men had been starved of ammunition by Russia’s defence ministry and that he would withdraw his men and expected the Russian army to take their place in Bakhmut by May 10.
“My lads will not suffer useless and unjustified losses in Bakhmut without ammunition,” Prigozhin said in the video accompanying a written withdrawal announcement addressed to the head of the Russian general staff, the defence ministry and President Vladimir Putin as supreme commander.
The announcement said “bureaucrats” had held back supplies despite knowing that Wagner’s target date to capture the city was May 9 when Moscow holds its Victory Day parade.
The battle for Bakhmut, which Russia sees as a stepping stone to other cities in Ukraine’s Donbas region, has been the most intense of the war, costing thousands of lives on both sides in months of bloody urban warfare.
Source: Aljezeera
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