ISTANBUL

The head of Wagner paramilitary group said on Monday his forces in the frontline city of Bakhmut are “successfully grinding” with the Ukrainian army.

“Our task (in Bakhmut) is to grind the Ukrainian army, not to give them the opportunity to gather in a counteroffensive. We are doing this more than successfully,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a statement on Telegram.

Russian forces have been trying for months to capture Bakhmut, a transport and logistics hub in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is part of the largely Russian-speaking industrialized Donbas region.

Prigozhin said Kyiv’s counteroffensive would begin as soon as they drive the Ukrainian military out of Bakhmut. “It can be a few days, a week, but very close, because the Ukrainians will put up a huge number of troops," he said.

He said Ukraine has not launched its counteroffensive because of weather conditions and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s intention to ruin May 9 celebrations, commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

“So the vectors converge: the capture of Bakhmut, the counteroffensive, the supply of foreign equipment, our complete carelessness - everything converges into one point. Zelensky needs to strike without a miss, and no matter how he is criticized, he does it in a highly professional manner. And we need to do the same,” he said.