The mercenary units of the Wagner Group claimed this Sunday control of the Stupki railway station, north of Bakhmut, the scene of fighting in eastern Ukraine.
“The robbery and cleaning of the Stupki station in the suburb of Artyomovsk [nomenclatura russa para Bakhmut] has been completed. The neighborhood is under full control of Wagner’s fighters,” says a statement from the militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic published on the Telegram messaging system and quoted by the Efe agency.
The completion of the operation in Stupki, considered key to accessing Bakhmut, was announced last week by Donetsk’s leader, pro-Russian leader Denis Pushilin.
“Now they [Wagner] liberated the Stupki neighborhood. If we take into account that there are fights for all the houses there, this is an important success at the current stage,” Pushilin told Russian state television.
The spokesman for the Eastern Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Sergei Cherevaty, said on Saturday that the situation in Bakhmut was difficult but the region remained under control, adding that Ukrainian forces would rebuild their defenses to resist Russian pressure.
The city of Bakhmut, which was called Artemivsk or Artyomovsk between 1924 and 2016, is located in eastern Ukraine on the Bakhmutka River.
It is a strategic point because it is connected by road with the two largest cities of Donetsk: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which are under the control of kyiv.
Source: TSF
