A Russian mercenary leader once described as Vladimir Putin's chef has claimed Bakhmut is Russian after months of bitter fighting.
New footage shows Yevgeny Progozhin, head of the bloodthirsty Wagner group, planting a flag amid the ruins of the city in Donetsk region, which has been utterly devastated by the Kremlin’s war.
The billionaire raised the Russian emblem while paying tribute to Vladlen Tatarsky, a propagandist blogger who was killed in St Petersburg on Sunday in a bomb blast at a cafe reported to be owned by Prigozhin himself.
