Wagner chief declares Artyomovsk (Bakmut) ‘formally captured’
RT.COM DISPATCH
2 Apr. 2023 21:48
FACILITATED BY REGIS TREMBLAY
Wagner Group private military company chief Evgeny Prigozhin © Telegram / Prigozhin's Press-Service
The head of the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner, Evgeny Prigozhin, has announced a milestone achievement in the battle for the city of Artyomovsk (known in Ukraine as Bakhmut), publishing a video allegedly taken in front of the town’s administrative building on Sunday evening.
“We hoisted the Russian flag with the inscription ‘Good memory to Vladlen Tatarsky’ and the flag of PMC Wagner on top of the city administration of Bakhmut,” Prigozhin said in the clip.
Prigozhin’s announcement comes just hours after prominent Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maksim Fomin) was killed in an apparent improvised explosive device blast in a café in St. Petersburg on Sunday afternoon.
“Legally speaking, Bakhmut is taken. The enemy is concentrated in the western districts,” the head of the PMC added.
The battle for Artyomovsk has emerged as one of the most intense and bloody engagements of the armed conflict in Ukraine, with both sides reportedly suffering significant casualties. Western officials have claimed that the city poses no strategic military value, but Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky pledged to defend it as long as possible after proclaiming the city a fortress.
Kiev’s attempts to hold on to Bakhmut, regardless of the losses, has “almost destroyed the Ukrainian army,” Prigozhin claimed earlier this week. However, Wagner fighters, who led the charge to capture the Donetsk People’s Republic city, also took “a serious beating,” he acknowledged.
SIDEBAR: CNN itself (of all places) confirms it.
On March 6, 2023, CNN, a leading anti-Russia disinformation platform in the West, ran the following item:  (ginobonza/Twitter) Wagner fighters were seen planting the Russian mercenary group’s flag on a T-34 tank monument in the eastern part of the city of Bakhmut. The footage, geolocated by CNN, shows four fighters running toward the monument. They took down a Ukrainian flag that was mounted on the tank’s barrel and planted the Wagner group’s flag on top of the tank. (The photo is not going to win any prizes, but it will have to do.—Ed) The fighters are then seen holding their guns up into the air and setting the Ukrainian flag on fire. Some more context: The T-34 was a tank used by Soviet forces during the Second World War and the monument is dedicated to the forces that liberated the city from Nazi Germany. It is located 500 meters (more than 546 yards) away from the Bakhmutova river, suggesting Ukrainian forces may have withdrawn from the eastern part of Bakhmut, consolidating their positions west of the river. |
ADDENDUM
This dispatch by RT was published a couple of days later:
Wagner chief reports progress in key Donbas city
View of Bakhmut in recent days. Much of the city has been shelled by both sides. (CC)
Russian forces have captured “everything” east of the Bakhmutka River in Artyomovsk, Evgeny Prigozhin has claimed
Russian forces are in full control of the eastern part of the strategic Donbass city of Artyomovsk, or Bakhmut as it’s called by Ukraine, the head of the Wagner Group private military company Evgeny Prigozhin has said.
“The units of the Wagner Group PMC have taken over the entire eastern part of Artyomovsk. Everything east of the Bakhmutka River is completely under the control of the Wagner Group,” Prigozhin announced in an audio message published by his press service on Wednesday.
The Wagner Group chief also posted a video of himself posing in front of the famous T-34 tank monument in the eastern part of Artyomovsk.
The Bakhmutka River cuts the city roughly in half, running from north to south.
Prigozhin’s claims have been corroborated by the Institute for the Study of War, with the Washington-based think tank saying in its daily report on Tuesday that “Russian forces have likely captured the eastern part of Bakhmut east of the Bakhmutka River following a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal.”
As is the case with many cities in wartime, this residential sector in Bakhmut has been severely destroyed. (CC)
Speaking about Artyomovsk earlier this week, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin suggested that the city was more of symbolic than operational importance. “The fall of [Artyomovsk] won’t necessarily mean that the Russians have changed the tide of this fight,” the Pentagon chief said.
However, Austin was contradicted by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, who explained that “taking [Artyomovsk] under control will allow [the Russian forces] further offensive actions deep into the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
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Ukraine soldiers in trenches. The battlefield conditions are extremely hard on both sides. (Click on images for best appreciation.) ["Battle of Bakhmut 2" by Viktor Borinets is licensed under CC BY 4.0.] |
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Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly insisted that he wouldn’t surrender the city, despite reports of his Western backers and military advisers reportedly urging him to cut his losses and withdraw.
Senior Biden administration officials told the Washington Post in late February that the Ukrainian leader “attaches symbolic importance” to the city and fears a setback to morale if it were captured by Russian forces.
ABOVE: AFU—-released video purporting to show the annihilation of Russian soldiers via drone-directed artillery. (Distributed by Wikimedia, frequently used as a Western disinformation platform, hence caution must be exercised in believing any claims. See for example this crudely defamatory page on Y. Prigozhin, Wagner's chief. Just about every sentence is loaded with hatred and hostile innuendo.).
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