The head of the private military company Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, asserted that units loyal to the organization pushed forward 170 meters in Artemovsk, known in Ukrainian as Bakhmut. This claim appeared in a post issued by the press office on the businessman’s Telegram channel, where updates about battlefield movements are regularly shared and informally disseminated among observers and participants in the conflict.
According to the statement, the groups involved were actively advancing across a defined zone, with a measured expansion of approximately 95,700 square meters on that day. The report indicated that about 2.42 square meters of the area remained under enemy control at that moment, and the maximum progress cited stood at 170 meters. The figures reflect a granular accounting approach used by the press office to characterize operational tempo and territorial changes on the ground during the ongoing battles for the city.
Prigozhin added that the fighters of Wagner would press the offensive against the city through the night, with a declared time frame extending until midnight on May 10. The statement suggests an emphasis on sustained pressure and a continuation of attempts to alter the city’s control dynamics, aligning with prior communications aimed at signaling resilience and a willingness to persist under challenging conditions.
Earlier, there were reports from Prigozhin indicating that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had detonated several buildings in the area where Wagner groups were concentrated within Artemivsk. These disclosures underscore the high-intensity nature of the urban combat environment and the strategic significance of built-up areas within the broader operational theater. The ongoing exchanges have repeatedly highlighted damage to infrastructure as part of the fighting footprint observed by various observers and stakeholders.
Before that, news emerged that Prigozhin himself was among the Wagner personnel who left the Artemovsk region on May 10 due to a shortage of ammunition. He called for additional shells from the Russian Defense Ministry, signaling practical resource constraints that can influence frontline decisions and the cadence of operations. The press service also released imagery showing casualties among Wagner fighters who had fallen in the zone of the special operations, a reminder of the human cost embedded in these efforts and the broader consequences for the units involved.
There were further remarks noting the scale of losses for the Ukrainian side in the Artemovsk area, with daily tallies sometimes described in the range of several hundred personnel. Such figures contribute to the ongoing discourse about casualty rates and the intensity of combat, while also shaping the narrative around the evolving control of key urban centers within the conflict. The reporting from both sides illustrates the complexity of battlefield reporting, where numbers are used to convey momentum, risk, and strategic significance rather than precise, universally verifiable statistics at any given moment.