The mercenaries of the Russian group Wagner assured on Sunday that they have taken a new location near the Ukrainian bastion of Bakhmut, in the eastern region of Donetsk.
“Today, the units of the Wagner army have captured the place of Krasnaya Gora,” the private military company reported on the Telegram social network.
The publication shows a video in which several mercenaries pose next to a sign with the name of that place, which is 10 kilometers from Bakhmut.
The Wagner group, which had been planning to attack Bakhmut since mid-2022, denied on Sunday that Russia had sent regular troops to this location and that its men had been transferred to the southern front.
“There is no special unit. Within a radius of about 50 kilometers are only the soldiers of the Wagner group who captured Bakhmut,” says Yevgeny Prigozhin, the group’s founder.
Prigozhin also denied invading Vuhledar, another major Ukrainian city further south of Donetsk, in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces. “We are neither north nor south,” he said.
Russian forces have stepped up ground offensive, aerial bombardment and artillery strikes against Ukrainian positions in Donbass and the neighboring Kharkiv region in recent days.
According to various Ukrainian and Western sources, these would be the first steps in the major offensive ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin to gain control of the four regions annexed in September, especially Donetsk.
Oleksy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Saturday night that Moscow had already started the “great offensive” but would face “major problems”.
“The offensive they planned is progressing little by little. But it is not the offensive they expected,” he assured in statements to Ukrainian public television.
Source: DN
