- by foxnews
- 17 Nov 2024
Prigozhin, who has previously criticised Gerasimov and Shoigu, made his statements as he claimed his Wagner army had taken control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar.
However, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, mocked the claims, saying in a video address that fighting was still going on.
The claims about the status of the fighting on the eastern Donbas came as Poland announced that it planned to transfer 10 German-made Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, in a move with wide significance.
However, a German government spokesperson said it was not aware of any requests from allies to send the tanks to Ukraine.
Prigozhin had released a photo showing him with a group of his fighters and a tank, which he said was taken in one of the tunnels of a saltmine in the south-west of Soledar.
Accounts from Ukrainian soldiers on that sector of the front suggested Russia had moved Wagner fighters from Bakhmut to focus solely on the battle for Soledar.
A Ukrainian soldier who has been posting video updates from the Bakhmut area described the fighting in Soledar as fierce, with contested buildings changing hands multiple times and soldiers suffering frostbite.
But any victory would come at a massive cost, with troops from both sides having taken heavy losses in some of the most intense combat since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.
The Kyiv government has released photos in recent days purporting to show scores of dead Russian soldiers in muddy fields.
The issue of supplying tanks to Ukraine has become the centre of a frenzied round of recent diplomacy, as a number of countries have put pressure on the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to allow the supply of Leopard 2s.
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