Russia claimed it captured the besieged city of Bakhmut, but Ukraine said it still controls some areas.
BAKHMUT, Ukraine --
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier said at the G7 summit in Japan: "We are keeping on, we are fighting."That followed Russian claims to the contrary. On Saturday the chief of the mercenary Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed to have captured Bakhmut after months of brutal fighting, saying he would hand it over to Russia later in May.
The battle has been compared to the kind of fighting seen in World War I, with soldiers fighting in a hellish landscape of mud and trenches, trees and buildings mangled by artillery fire.While Russian forces have continued their slow street-by-street advance in Bakhmut for many months, over the past two weeks Ukrainian forces have managed to re-capture small pockets of territory held by Russian troops to the northwest and southwest of the city.
RELATED: Russian forces lash out indiscriminately as Ukraine increases military pressure on frontline towns Over the early part of 2023, the routes into Bakhmut had gradually come under the control of Russian forces and the battle for the city turned into an inch-by-inch grind, with Ukrainian forces repelling dozens of assaults each day.
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