Ukrainian Troops Capture Village in Bakhmut and Russian Troops Run Secretly, Wagner Group Boss: Shame!

Conditions in the city of Bakhmut. (Wikimedia Commons/armed Forces of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - The leader of Russian mercenary Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday, Ukrainian troops had recaptured part of a village near Bakhmut, while a top Russian-backed official said the military situation around the town was difficult.

Prigozhin's Wagner militia captured Bakhmut last month, after the longest fighting of the war, and surrendered its position there to regular Russian troops. Since then, the Ukrainians have continued to attack areas north and south of the city.

"Now that part of the Berkhivka settlement is gone, troops are quietly fleeing. Shameful!" Prigozhin said in an audio message published by his press service.

Berkhivka is located about 3 km (1.9 mi) northwest of Bakhmut. The Wagner Group claimed to have captured it on 24 February.

Furthermore, Prigozhin urged Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, to go into battle and lead troops.

"Come on, you can do it! And if you can't, you will die a hero," he said in his message.

It is known that Prigozhin had been inflaming a public feud with Shoigu and Gerasimov for months. He frequently accused them of failing to provide sufficient ammunition and support to Wagner's troops in the field, causing him to suffer unnecessarily heavy losses.

In recent days, Prigozhin escalated the feud further, accusing regular troops under the command of the Ministry of Defense of 'mining' the exits from Bakhmut used by Wagner's units.

Prigozhin's press service published a video on Monday showing the interrogation of a prisoner who identified himself as a lieutenant colonel in Russia's 72nd motorized rifle brigade, which had been fighting in the vicinity of Bakhmut, previously blamed by Prigozhin for the defeat around Berkhivka.

The video appears to be a forced confession, with the man responding in a low voice to a loud question. He said he had opened fire on Wagner's vehicle while in a drunken stupor, and had disarmed a group of mercenaries because of "personal enmity" with the Wagner Group. When asked how his actions could be categorized, he replied, after a long pause: "Guilty".

Separately, Denis Pushilin, a top Moscow-backed official in parts of the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, including Bakhmut, told Russian state television the situation on both sides of the city was "under control" but "very difficult".