The boss of the Russian company Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that the units of contracted fighters started withdrawing from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut this Thursday and handed over the positions to Moscow’s regular forces.
“We are withdrawing very carefully,” oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video message posted to digital messaging network Telegram.
On Sunday, after announcing the “total takeover” of Bakhmut after 10 months of fighting, the businessman had already said that the fighters of the Wagner group would withdraw on Thursday.
According to Prigozhin, the fighters hired by Moscow will be stationed in “rear area training camps”.
“Let’s switch positions with the army [Exército da Rússia] and leave ammunition and combat rations”he added.
In an ironic tone, the oligarch said he is leaving “two men hired by the Wagner group” in case the “(Russian) army needs help to defend the positions”.
“We will meet before June 1, we will rest and prepare. After that we will have another mission,” said the businessman who appears in the images next to a combat vehicle.
On Wednesday, Prigozhin acknowledged that the Wagner group lost 10,000 prisoners in the Russian prison system during the Ukrainian campaign who had been hired to fight on Ukrainian territory.
In a recent interview with Moscow’s official ideologue Konstantin Dolgov, the oligarch admitted that he had hired a total of 50 men who had been held in Russian prisons.
Earlier, Prigozhin said that between 15,000 and 16,000 men (mercenaries from the Wagner group) had died during Bakhmut’s campaign.
The Russian oligarch estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 Ukrainian troops died in the battle.
The United States claims that Russia lost about 100,000 fighters in Bakhmut.
The situation regarding the battle of eastern Ukraine has yet to be verified by independent sources.
Source: DN
