On Saturday, mercenaries from the Russian personal navy contractor the Wagner Group claimed victory within the east Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after a gruelling battle that lasted for eight months. For essentially the most half, the pro-Moscow camp has been elated at lastly dislodging the cussed Ukrainian defenders.
Though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has denied on Sunday that Bakhmut has fallen, Russian businessman and Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed in any other case in a voice memo to his 420,000 Telegram followers.
“There’s not a single Ukrainian soldier within the village of Bakhmut, given that we’ve got stopped taking prisoners,” he declared.
“There are an enormous variety of corpses of the Ukrainian navy. Bakhmut is taken utterly alongside all its authorized boundaries, to the final centimetre. Vladimir Alexandrovich [Zelenskyy] is disingenuous, or he, like our navy leaders, is just not conscious of what’s taking place on the bottom.”
By a press release on the Kremlin’s official press service, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin congratulated the Russian military and Wagner mercenary group on the seize of Artemovsk, as town was identified in Soviet instances and till 2016.
Footage on each Russian TV and Telegram channels confirmed the Russian flag waving from the rooftop of an residence constructing nonetheless standing among the many ruins of Bakhmut.
“With out exaggeration, a historic second – the Wagner fighters are hoisting the Russian flag, and the flag of their firm, on the final avenue of Artemovsk,” Amir Yusupov, a correspondent embedded on the entrance line, reported for the state-owned Channel One.
“Town has been cleared … Many may have left on the finish of their contract, however each single one stayed.”
One masked mercenary interviewed on digicam in contrast the expertise to World Conflict II.
“How may I go away the lads?” he requested. “I needed to see this second. These are in all probability the identical feelings as our grandfathers felt in Berlin.”
The Wagner Orchestra, a Telegram channel describing themselves as “followers” of the mercenary outfit, revealed a video of bearded commander Alexander “Ratibor” Kuznetsov elevating the Russian and Wagner flags over the ruined metropolis and yelling ethnic slurs at Ukrainians, telling them to “go f*** themselves!”
One other video on the channel exhibits a bunch of Wagner fighters triumphantly firing their weapons into the air as a Wagner flag waves within the background.
An article by the state-owned information company RIA Novosti on the “liberation of Artemovsk” blames Ukrainian forces for any civilian casualties.
“Earlier than the battle started, greater than seventy thousand folks lived right here,” it learn.
“Most have left town. In keeping with the refugees, Ukrainian troopers intentionally fired on civilians.”
The article assured that, regardless of Ukrainian propaganda, “fortress Bakhmut” had certainly fallen, which is able to enable Russian forces to maneuver on to the close by city of Chasiv Yar.
“It is a victory, a kind of that carry the principle victory nearer,” Andrey Medvedev, former journalist and Moscow politician, wrote on Telegram.
“The trail we nonetheless should go is lengthy and troublesome, and we nonetheless have so much to undergo. There will likely be failures and disappointments. There will likely be days of darkish despair and unbelief. However on such days we will keep in mind simply Bakhmut … Glory to the Russian soldier!”
Not a tactical victory
Regardless of Moscow’s claims of victory, Igor Girkin, nom de guerre Strelkov, a former Russian soldier and intelligence officer who led the unique 2014-15 rebellion of east Ukrainian separatists, painted a bleaker image to his almost 800,000 Telegram subscribers.
He describes the seize of Bakhmut as not a victory in any tactical sense, however a part of the Kremlin’s coverage of “freezing the battle via a compromise settlement”, and as such, solely aspiring to put on the enemy down till Kyiv and its Western allies comply with let Russia hold Crimea and the Donbas. Strelkov is a hardline Russian nationalist who believes Moscow isn’t taking the conquest of Ukraine severely sufficient.
“On the entire, the operation resulted in a strategic failure of our troops,” wrote Strelkov. “The enemy has NOT been ousted from the Donbas in all the principle instructions, in most instructions – not moved in any respect.”
He added that the Russian navy had exhausted weapon stockpiles, ammunition and manpower that will likely be “mandatory for additional offensive operations”.
“That’s why Bakhmut was given elevated consideration for the final two months – it was mandatory to realize no less than some outcome ‘for propaganda’ in an effort to ‘take a breath’ afterwards. And so we gained, form of,” Strelkov stated.
Strelkov additionally warned that the sources spent on Bakhmut, an “pointless” and “Pyrrhic” victory that was “not well worth the effort and cash spent on it”, will go away the Russian aspect weak to the Ukrainian counteroffensive.