Who is in control of Bakhmut?
For more than nine months it has been the key to the Donbas. The temperature of the Ukrainian invasion has been measured in the city that has been in the headlines for months and that today lives an uncertain situation. The head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced the capture of Bakhmut after more than 10 months of siege by Russian paramilitaries: "the meat grinder of Bakhmut lasted 224 days," the businessman said in a video posted on his Telegram account.
"Before 25 May, we will examine it completely, create the necessary lines of defence and hand it over to the military to keep them busy," was Prighozin's message in a mise-en-scène addressed to more than one recipient. The bloody campaign in Bakhmut has brought to light the deep disagreements between the head of the Wagner Group and the Russian Defence Ministry, which has been repeatedly blamed for failures on the frontline due to alleged shortfalls in weapons and ammunition.
PMC "Wagner" will withdraw troops from Bakhmut on May 25th.
— Feher_Junior (@Feher_Junior) May 20, 2023
Now Prigozhin will hand over the city to the troops of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and quickly get out of the city - the Armed Forces of Ukraine are already cutting off the flanks in this… pic.twitter.com/yrgXpeWv8V
For the Kremlin, now is not the time to highlight the misunderstandings in the long-awaited propaganda message following the self-proclaimed seizure of Bakhmut. For months Putin has been waiting for a speech that would demonstrate Russia's capabilities not only to the West, but also within its own borders, where more than a few authorities and part of the population have questioned its "special military operation".
Far from differences, the Russian president congratulated Wagner on the capture of Bakhmut, praised the support provided by the Russian armed forces to the paramilitaries and announced decorations for those "who have excelled", according to the officialist RBK channel.
Zelenski's doubts
The last hour on the front line is many kilometres away from Hiroshima. But the question is unavoidable. "Mr President, is Bajmut still in Ukrainian hands?" a journalist asked Zelenski after his meeting with Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit. "I don't think so", were the first statements.
"What you have to understand is that there is nothing, all the buildings have been destroyed. For now, Bajmut exists only in our hearts. Well, many Russian soldiers dead, but they came for us", Zelenski concluded in dubious statements that his spokesman had to clarify. Speaking to CNN and The New York Times, Sergi Nikiforov claimed that the Ukrainian leader wanted to deny Russia's seizure of Bakhmut and that he meant that Russian troops were "not" in control of the city.
But this 'I don't think so' has already raised doubts that contrast with the Ukrainian army's statements and Zelenski's own statements minutes before his meeting with Biden. The Ukrainian president went so far as to say that Ukraine "has a strong position on the battlefield" and hinted that expectations remain that Ukrainian forces will soon launch the counteroffensive by which they hope to liberate Moscow-occupied regions.
Despite Prighozin's announcement, the Ukrainian army in its latest assessment on Sunday said that "fighting for the city is still going on". The same message was conveyed by Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar on her Telegram account: "We are positioned in a kind of partial encirclement, which gives us the opportunity to destroy the enemy. Therefore, the enemy has to defend itself in the part of the city it controls".
