Wagner claims Bakhmut captured, Kyiv says fighting ongoing

The fall to Russia of Bakhmut, where both Moscow and Kyiv are believed to have suffered huge losses.

Russia's private Army Wagner claimed on Saturday the total control of the east Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the epicentre of fighting, as Kyiv said the battle was continuing but admitted the situation was "critical".

Bakhmut, a salt mining town that once had a population of 70,000 people, has been the scene of the longest and bloodiest battle in Moscow's more than year-long Ukraine offensive.

The fall to Russia of Bakhmut, where both Moscow and Kyiv are believed to have suffered huge losses, would have high symbolic value.

If confirmed, Bakhmut's loss would allow Moscow to bring home a victory after a series of humiliating defeats.

It would also come before a major counteroffensive that Kyiv has been preparing for months.

The announcement by Wagner came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took part in the G-7 summit in Japan.

The mercenary group's boss Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed the city had fallen to his mercenaries in a video posted on Telegram, in which fighters held Russian flags on the backdrop of ruins.