The battle for Bakhmut continues. The head of the Wagner group Yevgheny Prigozhin ‘hands over’ his positions to Ramzan Kadyrov starting on May 10, the date announced on Friday for his withdrawal from the city in eastern Ukraine, which has been under siege for months. AND the Chechen leader assures that his forces are ready to move to Bakhmut. “Akhmat units are ready to reach Artemovsk (Bakhmut). I have already signed the order for the Commander-in-Chief assuring that the units are preparing to take control of the city. The units are combat-ready. We are just waiting for orders. Several units are already on their way to the military special operation zone,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
“In the near future – added Kadyrov, quoted by Tass – we will liberate the city, despite all sorts of false reports about some terrible counterattack by the Ukrainian army. We have already started developing our strategy for this area together with the Ministry of Russian defense. Believe me, the tactic will produce positive results”.
In a series of videos circulated in the past few hours, Prigozhin had announced that he would withdraw his mercenaries from Bakhmut on May 10, unless the defense ministry provided them with the necessary ammunition. According to Wagner’s boss, since May 1 the group has received only 10% of the ammunition it needs to continue the fighting.
According to Prigozhin, “95% of Bakhmut’s territory is under the control of Russian forces, the remaining 5% does not affect the course of the entire special military operation”.
“The operation was completed as planned and did not involve the capture of Bakhmut” but “planned to blockade the Ukrainian armed forces and arrange a truce for the Russian army so as to reorganize the combat capability” of the Russian forces, he said the head of the Wagner group.
Once Bakhmut leaves, Wagner “will fold back to reorganize his fighting capacity”. In the event of a threat, “Wagner will immediately defend his homeland,” she explained.
“PHOSPHORUS AMMUNITION” – Meanwhile, the press office of the Special Forces of Ukraine reports: “The enemy used phosphorus and incendiary ammunition in Bakhmut, in an attempt to wipe the city off the face of the earth”. The Special Forces also provided a video to the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper. “However, the Special Forces soldiers and other defense force units continue to courageously defend the city,” the statement concluded.
MISSILE IPERSONICO – Ukraine claims it shot down a hypersonic missile over Kiev using the new Patriot defense system it received from the United States. The commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Mykola Oleshchuk, wrote in Telegram that a Kinzhal-type ballistic missile was intercepted over the Ukrainian capital in recent days. It is the first time that Ukraine’s use of a Patriot has been disclosed.
“We shot down the Kinzhal, it happened on the night of May 4 in the skies over the Kiev region,” Oleshchuk wrote, explaining that the Kh-47 missile was fired from a MiG-31K and shot down by a Patriot.
ATTACK RUSSIA – Yesterday, Russian forces carried out 11 attacks in the border areas of the Sumy region. 84 explosions were recorded. This was reported by Ukrainska Pravda which cites the regional military administration of Sumy.
ATTEMPT ON PRILEPIN – Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin was injured in an attack. Successfully operated on, he is in a medically induced coma for a better and faster recovery, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region Gleb Nikitin announced on his Telegram channel. A man was arrested for the attack, who confessed to having acted on the orders of the Ukrainian secret services, according to what the press service of the Russian Investigative Committee told the media.