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.
Despite Prigozhin's new claim of "legally" taking Bakhmut, which he said he was making at 11pm local time on Sunday, large parts of the city are thought to still be under Ukraine's control.
He said: “Behind me is the building of [Bakhmut] city administration. This is the Russian flag.
“The message on the flag reads: ‘In kind memory of Vladlen Tatarsky.”
But Progozhin - once nicknamed Putin’s ‘chef’ because of his role arranging banquets in the Kremlin - also appeared to admit Ukrainian forces still control the west of the city, which before the conflict had a population of almost 75,000.
He commented: “Legally we took Bakhmut. The enemy is concentrated in the western region.
“Commanders of the detachments, who took this whole area and the administration building, will erect these flags.”
Russian state news agency TASS also reported that a flag had been hoisted over Artyomovsk, the Russian name for Bakhmut.
It is not yet known what effect his possibly symbolic claim of legal control may have on the wider war, with Ukrainian forces saying the Russians are "very far" from capturing Bakhmut.
Serhiy Cherevatiy, from the eastern military command, said: "Bakhmut is Ukrainian and they have not captured anything and are very far from doing that to put it mildly."
Another Ukrainian official speaking yesterday said that they had repelled a number of Russian attacks within the city borders.
Putin's forces have experienced heavy losses in the area during long months of fighting, as Western officials estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured in the city.
President Zelensky had previously warned if Ukraine loses Bakhmut to Russia, Putin would "sell this victory to the West, to his society, to China, to Iran."
He told the Associated Press: "If he will feel some blood - smell that we are weak - he will push, push, push.
"We can't lose the steps because the war is a pie - pieces of victories. Small victories, small steps."
"'Our society will feel tired. Our society will push me to have compromise with them."
