Ukraine said today that Russian forces are far from capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut and that fighting is raging around the city’s town hall, where the Wagner mercenary group says it raised the Russian flag.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern military command, Serhii Cherevaty, told Reuters it was unclear where Russian forces raised their flag and that they falsely claimed to have captured the city.

Bahamut has become the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, now in its second year, with huge casualties on both sides while most of the city has been destroyed by shelling.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary organization, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said late yesterday that his forces had raised the Russian flag at the city’s town hall.

Prigozhin stated that from a “legal point of view” Bakhmut has been occupied by Russia, a notion that Tserevati strongly rejected.

“There is fighting around the (Bahmut) town hall building, they have not understood anything from a legal point of view,” Tserevati said.

“Bahmut is Ukrainian and they have not understood anything and are far from such a thing, to put it politely,” he stressed.