Russia says it has thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive in Donetsk. Mercenary chief Prigozhin accuses the Russian army of mining retreat routes. All developments in the live blog.
The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has again raised serious allegations against the regular Russian army. In mid-May, soldiers mined a road on which his fighters wanted to drive out of the city of Bakhmut, which has since been conquered in eastern Ukraine, Prigozhin said on Telegram in the evening. He also published a document that is supposed to be an operational log from mid-May and in which there is also talk of exchanges of fire between Wagner mercenaries and soldiers. These allegations could not be verified. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow did not comment.
Prigozhin made similar allegations a few days ago. The US Institute for War Studies (ISW) sees it as a possible attempt by the 62-year-old to divert attention from recent tensions between his troops and fighters of Chechnya’s ruler Ramzan Kadyrov through the dispute with the Defense Ministry.
According to Russia, it has foiled a major Ukrainian offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Ukraine opened the offensive on Sunday with six armored and two armored battalions, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready for a counter-offensive to recapture territories occupied by Russia.
conflicting parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
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