The head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigoyine, said his troops had “some things to learn” from the Ukrainian army amid a bitter battle to capture Bakhmout in eastern Ukraine.
“The Ukrainian army works efficiently and consistently. We can learn from them. But in any case, the Wagner units are moving forward meter by meter,” he said in a statement released by his press service on Thursday.
He assured that “the place Artiomovsk (name given by the Russian authorities to Bakhmout, editor’s note) will be taken”.
Since last summer, Wagner’s troops and the Russian army have been trying to capture this city in the Donetsk region (east), with questionable strategic interest, but which has acquired great symbolic importance as the fighting has continued.
On Thursday, Yevgeny Prigoyine also claimed that his units had captured the village of Klichivka south of Bakhmout and that “fierce fighting” was still ongoing.
Last week Wagner announced the capture of Soledar northeast of Bakhmout, presented by Moscow as an important step towards encirclement.
At the same time, Yevgeny Prigoyine regularly, more or less indirectly, denounces the shortcomings of the command of the regular Russian army, which suffered serious setbacks during its offensive in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, still quoted by his press service, Mr. Prigoyine had also directly criticized the Kremlin, explaining why, in his opinion, the American giant Google’s YouTube service in Russia had not been shut down.
“The main reason is that the presidential administration today has a large number of people who only think about one thing: the faster Russia loses the war, the faster the Americans will come to reconfigure us,” he said.
“Because if we kneel before Uncle Sam, he will forgive us all our sins: the fact that we defended Russian interests, the fact that we supported Putin and the fact that we simply lived on this earth.” he joked.