Prigozhin answered Zelensky about the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Bakhmut: ‘There are a lot of their corpses here, one tried to escape in a woman’s dress’ (AUDIO). Yevgeny Prigozhin, the military guru of PMC Wagner, responded to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s statement that Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) had not been taken, and that the Ukrainian military was still present in some areas of the city.

‘There is not a single Ukrainian military in Bakhmut for the reason that we stopped taking prisoners,’ he said. ‘There are a huge number of corpses of the Ukrainian military. Bakhmut has been taken completely along all its legal boundaries to the last centimetre, ‘Prigozhin states categorically.

‘Therefore, Zelensky is cunning, or he, like many of our military leaders, is simply not aware of what is happening on earth. It could be.

The last Ukrainian soldier in a woman’s dress ran across the road. They shot him. We take no prisoners,’ he concluded.

The strategic northern Donetsk region city of Artemovsk (also known as Bakhmut) was fully liberated by on Saturday May 20 by units of the Russian military and the Wagner Group, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and foreign mercs believed to be buried in the city’s ruins.

Russian forces completed the liberation of Artemovsk on May 20 after 224 days of brutal, block-by-block, house-to-house fighting. The city, which had a pre-war population of about 70,000 people, is a key regional transport hub and was turned into a seemingly impregnable fortress by Ukrainian forces beginning in 2015, fortified by thousands of tons of concrete and mined.

Artemovsk’s liberation is expected to move the front further away from Donetsk, hopefully easing the city’s suffering at the hands of Ukrainian shelling over the course of more than nine years.

The battles for the city have turned it into hell for local civilians. On Saturday, another fighter told Sputnik that an elderly man left a basement where he had taken shelter to go over to the Russian side to be evacuated, but, just 50 meters from Russian lines, he was hit by Ukrainian artillery, dying on the spot. ‘He survived through the whole war, but in the end, died at the very end – just before Bakhmut was taken,’ the fighter said.

Russian forces taking part in the fighting have estimated that more than 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries died in fighting for the city, which President Zelensky once dubbed the ‘fortress of our morale.’ The Ukrainian president refused to order a retreat from Artemovsk in March after it became clear that Russian forces would take it, with the Russian military subsequently reporting on hundreds of casualties among the Ukrainian military and mercenaries to Russian artillery, air and drone attacks daily for weeks.

PLEASE SHARE OUR STORIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

THE ALL LIES INVASION Mike Walsh TWO BOOKS IN ONE – SAVE MONEY A thought-provoking illustrated compendium of bizarre, amusing examples of Allied wartime propaganda.  38 rave reviews over 130 illustrated stories: the lies that betrayed millions of Allied servicemen and their families. ONLY €27.

BUY MICHAEL WALSH’S BOOKS HERE