Wagner claims ‘legal’ control of Ukraine’s Bakhmut

Russia’s Wagner Group has claimed “legal” control of Bakhmut in Ukraine, but Kiev said its forces still hold the eastern city, describing fighting there as “particularly hot”.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary force, said on Monday that his troops, involved in a months-long effort to encircle and take the bombed-out city, had raised a Russian flag over the administrative building.

“Legally, Bakhmut has been taken. The enemy is concentrated in the western parts,” Prigozhin said in an audio message posted to his press service’s Telegram account.

But there was no indication from Ukrainian officials that Bakhmut, a city of 70,000 before the Russian invasion began more than 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 had attempted to take control of the city, but their forces had “repulsed 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 Bakhmut. It is especially hot there.”

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar previously described the situation around the city as “tense”. Ukrainian troops defended their positions and Russian troops paid little attention to losses as they attacked, Maliar said.

Al Jazeera was unable to verify the battlefield reports.

Ukrainian military commanders have said their own counter-offensive — backed by newly delivered Western tanks and other hardware — is not far off, but have emphasized the importance of holding Bakhmut in the meantime.

Prominent Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said fighting had engulfed central Bakhmut. Ukrainian troops had repelled 25 enemy attacks, but Russian troops had captured the AZOM metal factory, which Ukrainian troops had defended for days.

“The enemy is attacking the city center from the north, east and south and is trying to take the city under its complete control,” Zhdanov, who has close ties to the Ukrainian army, said in a video posted on YouTube.

In Kostyantynivka, a town about 27 km from Bakhmut, a “massive attack” by Russian missiles on Sunday killed three men and three women and injured 11 others, Ukrainian authorities said.

The attack targeted residential areas where “ordinary citizens” lived, Zelenskyy said.

There was a large crater in a garden and windows were shattered from ground to upper floors in two 14-storey tower blocks, while private homes nearby had roofs smashed, the AFP news agency reported.

In Russia, a well-known military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed on Sunday by a bomb attack at a café in St Petersburg.

Russia’s State Investigation Committee said it had opened a murder investigation into the blast, which left 25 people injured.

It was not immediately known who was behind the murder. Wagner’s Prigozhin said he “would not blame the Kiev regime,” but another senior Russian official pointed the finger at Ukraine without providing evidence.

A Ukrainian presidential adviser said “domestic terrorism” was breaking out in Russia.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, condemned the Western “hype” surrounding the arrest of US journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges and rejected Washington’s latest call for his release.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told his US counterpart Antony Blinken that Gershkovich was “trying to get classified information” when he was arrested this week.

Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is believed to be the first foreign journalist to be detained for espionage in post-Soviet Russia, and his arrest is expected 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 sweeping crackdown on the media.

“The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the US and intimidate the foreign press that still works in Russia,” the Wall Street Journal said.

The White House has condemned the allegations as “ridiculous” and has warned Americans currently in Russia to leave 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 given a 16-year sentence on espionage charges that he denies.