Ukraine’s military has rejected as untrue a Russian claim to have captured more than 80 per cent of the city of Bakhmut and says its forces control “considerably” more than 20 per cent of it in the east.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for the eastern military command, made the comment to Reuters a day after the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said that his forces were advancing in their bid to seize Bakhmut after months of fighting.
“I was just in touch with the commander of one of the brigades holding the defence of the city. And I can confidently say that Ukrainian defensive forces control a considerably larger per cent of Bakhmut’s territory,” he said.
Ukrainian forces have hung on for months in Bakhmut, a small city in eastern Donetsk region, where the fiercest fighting of Russia’s full-scale February 2022 invasion has killed thousands of soldiers and been dubbed the “meat-grinder”.
Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Tuesday his forces controlled most of Bakhmut including the whole administrative centre, factories, warehouses and municipality buildings.
“Prigozhin needs to show at least some kind of victory in the city, which they have been trying to capture for nine months in a row and that’s why he’s making such statements,” Mr Cherevatyi said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday demanded that the world respond to a video shared online that allegedly shows a Ukrainian prisoner of war being beheaded.
“This is a video of Russia as it is,” Mr Zelensky said in a video posted online.
He said it was neither an accident nor an isolated incident.
No one would understand if state leaders did not react to the video, he said.
“Action must be taken now!”
He added that Ukrainians must focus on the front and drive the occupiers out of the country.
“Smashing the occupier, sentences for the murderers and a tribunal for the state of evil,” are the main tasks now, Mr Zelensky said.
His comments came after a video was shared on social media late on Tuesday which seems to show a Ukrainian prisoner of war being beheaded by a Russian soldier.
The trees in the video are green, suggesting the video was recorded last year.
United Nations Human Rights observers in Ukraine said they were “appalled” by the video, saying it showed “a brutal execution of a man who appears to be a Ukrainian prisoner of war”.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia was worse than the Islamic State group, and demanded the country’s expulsion from the UN.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin cast doubt on the authenticity of the video.
“First of all, we live in a world of fakes and therefore we have to check the authenticity of the footage,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
They were “horrific images”, Mr Peskov said. But he said it was yet to be established whether the beheading actually occurred.
Then, he said, the authorities should examine which side committed the crime.
The UN recently accused both warring parties of serious war crimes, including executions of prisoners of war.
