Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday his Wagner fighters had completed the capture of Bakhmut, but Ukraine rejected the claim and said fighting was still going on.
Prigozhin made the claim in a video in which he appeared in combat fatigues in front of a line of fighters holding Russian flags and Wagner banners.
“Today, at 12 noon, Bakhmut was completely taken,” Prigozhin said. “We completely took the whole city, from house to house.”
Ukrainian military spokesperson Serhiy Cherevatyi told Reuters: “This is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.”
Bakhmut has been the focus of the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine’s war.
Prigozhin said in the video that his forces would withdraw from Bakhmut from May 25 for rest and retraining, handing over control to the regular Russian army.
Prigozhin taunted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden, who were taking part in a Group of Seven summit in Japan on Saturday where the Ukraine war was front of mind for world leaders.
His victory claim followed fierce fighting around the city in the past week in which Ukraine claimed it pushed back some Russian forces.
