(Near Bakhmout) In the aftermath of the spectacular armed rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigojine and his Wagner men in Russia, the Kyiv army said on Sunday that it saw no major change on the front around Bakhmout, in eastern Ukraine.
“Most of the troops understand that this is a circus, that the Russians have not left. They are still in their positions,” observes Nazar, 26, a bearded soldier parked at a gas station on a road in the Bakhmout area.
The city of Bakhmout, in Donbass, was for several months the epicenter of violent fighting between Ukrainian forces and those of the paramilitary group Wagner, led by their tempestuous leader, Evguéni Prigojine.
Despite its capture in May by the businessman’s fighters, who then returned control of the area to the regular Russian army, hostilities with troops from Kyiv continue.
The Ukrainian army has even been leading a counter-offensive there for several weeks, advancing slightly on the flanks, at the same time as it tries to break through the Russian defenses on the southern front, several hundred kilometers away.
But events accelerated when Mr. Prigojine launched an armed rebellion on Russian soil on Friday, his convoy taking control of a military center in Rostov (southwest Russia) and heading towards Moscow, at the point of approach a few hundred kilometers from the Russian capital.
It took the mediation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the Kremlin and Yevgeny Prigojine to reach an agreement, ratifying the end of this spectacular enterprise.
” Fake news ”
“We are returning from the Bakhmout area, we can say that there is ongoing fighting in the Klichtchiivka and Bakhmout area”, explains simply Nazar, who does not want to believe in the sincerity of Mr. Prigojine’s rebellion.
According to him, it had the real aim of deceiving Ukraine.
“Russia is trying by all means to make us lose control” with “false information”, he wants to believe. Russian forces “continued to attack yesterday, and today”.
According to another soldier met by AFP, who did not wish to give his name, but specified that he had been fighting in the area for six months, Wagner soldiers continued to operate opposite and Russia was still sending to the combat of ex-convicts initially recruited by Evguéni Prigojine. Unverifiable claims from independent sources.
“Storm Z is present here”, says this soldier, about a Russian unit comprising these fighters.
“Small groups [de Russes] left their positions”, swears for his part Oleksandre, another Ukrainian soldier, without giving more details.
Sign, according to him, that the situation on the ground “is changing positively”, even though the Ukrainians have only taken over a few localities after nearly a month of a counter-offensive supposed, in fine, to allow Kyiv to liberate all the territories occupied by Moscow.
‘No more injuries’
In a medical center still located on the Eastern Front, a doctor said on Sunday that he had observed an “increase” in the number of wounded “these last two, three days”.
“It works in waves: when we are on the offensive, we have more wounded”, schematically explains Dmytro, surgeon of the 5e assault brigade.
“On average, we currently have between 60 and 80 [blessés à traiter] every day, ”he figures, specifying that concussions represented the greatest number.
Within an hour at the scene, AFP journalists saw four injured soldiers arrive.
One of them, seriously injured, his face covered with earth, risked the amputation of both his legs, according to a combat medic also named Nazar, according to whom the rapid evacuation of the soldier from the battlefield had Safe. Another had received shrapnel in the leg.
But not all of them come out alive from the intense fighting between the Ukrainians and the Russian army.
Nurse Nazar explains that two soldiers from his unit died in the morning – including a father of two children – killed before they could be evacuated.
A balance sheet which is added, he says, to five other soldiers mowed down last week by troops from Moscow, positioned a few kilometers away.
According to him, the Russians have even changed tactics: “Before, if they could take prisoners [des soldats] alive, they did. Now they just shoot to kill.”