Wagner boss says his mercenaries have “virtually surrounded the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, with “only one way left” as Putin closes in on first major success in six months.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said Friday that his forces had “virtually surrounded” Bakhmut, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine that has seen the heaviest fighting of the Moscow invasion.

Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin said there was “only one way left” to leave the city so Ukrainian defenders could leave as Russian troops moved in.

Footage has circulated on the internet of a railway bridge destroyed by an explosion which some say was Ukrainian troops covering their retreat. Others said Russia destroyed the bridge. MailOnline could not immediately verify the video.

Ukraine has said it will defend the “Bakhmut fortress” as long as possible, but this week officials admitted the situation was becoming increasingly difficult.

Russia is determined to take Bakhmut – a now-ruined city once famous for its sparkling wine – as part of its broader goal of conquering the entire Donetsk region.

“Units of Wagner’s paramilitary group have practically surrounded Bakhmut, there is only one way left,” Prigozhin said in a video posted to Telegram.

The burly 61-year-old has posted regularly about the progress of Wagner, his once shadowy force at the heart of the struggle in eastern Ukraine.

He said his fighters had taken three towns north of Bakhmut in recent weeks: Yagidne, Berkhivka and Paraskoviivka.

Some of his earlier claims, such as when he said Wagner took Soledar in January, have been denied by Moscow, suggesting a power struggle.

“We used to fight against the professional army, now we see more and more old people and children,” Prigozhin said in the video published on Friday, in which warlord Wagner also appeared to show three Ukrainian prisoners of war.

“They are fighting, but their life expectancy in Bakhmut is now very short, a day or two,” Prigozhin said, urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “[Oekraïnse soldate]too late.”

Ukrainian troops held out for months, engaging in brutal trench warfare and artillery fire that leveled large parts of the city.

Zelenskyy said this week that fighting is “only escalating”.

His comments followed an assessment by Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who said the situation in the city was “extremely tense”.

Only about 4,500 civilians live in the devastated city, which had a population of about 70,000 before the conflict, Ukrainian officials said.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have reported heavy casualties fighting for control of the city, whose symbolic importance outweighs military significance.

Wagner himself, who at his peak had a force of some 50,000 fighters after Prigozhin had recruited thousands of prisoners from Russia, reportedly lost up to 40,000 of those troops in his attack on the Bakhmut region.

Wagner and Russia are said to have sent wave after wave of soldiers against Ukrainian defenses in battles that have been compared to a World War I “meat grinder”.

Pictured: Ukrainian soldiers prepare to fire an Msta-B howitzer at Russian positions near the frontline town of Bakhmut on March 2 as they continue to defend the town

Ukraine has said it will defend the “Bakhmut fortress” as long as possible, but this week officials admitted the situation was becoming increasingly difficult. Pictured: Ukrainian soldiers walk in a muddy ditch along the front line around the city as Russia approaches

This video file, captured by AFPTV using a drone, shows an aerial view of the almost total destruction of the city of Bakhmut on February 27

Kiev said its troops were still holding out there and acknowledged that the situation had worsened this week.

Volodymyr Nazarenko, a deputy commander of Ukraine’s National Guard, told Ukraine’s NV Radio that the situation was “critical” and fighting was going on “around the clock”.

“They do not count their losses when they tried to take the city by assault. The task of our forces in Bakhmut is to inflict as many casualties as possible on the enemy. Every meter of Ukrainian land costs the enemy hundreds of lives,” he said.

“We need as much ammunition as possible. There are far more Russians here than we have ammunition to destroy.’

The commander of a Ukrainian drone unit operating in Bakhmut, Robert Brovdi, who goes by the name “Madyar”, said in a video posted on social media that his unit had been ordered by the military to immediately to withdraw the city. He said he fought there for 110 days and gave no reason for the order to leave.

The battle for the city has also exposed the political rivalry between Putin’s longtime ally Prigozhin and the Russian armed forces.

Last week he made an unprecedented call for the Russians to side with him and for the Ministry of Defense to share ammunition with his fighters.

While the battleground is in eastern Ukraine, Russia said this week that a group of Ukrainian fighters had entered the southern Bryansk region.

Kiev dismissed the claims as “deliberate provocation”.

Moscow says regions bordering Ukraine are regularly shelled by Ukrainian troops, but the reported incursion was a rare instance of fighting in Russia.

The Kremlin said on Friday it would take steps to prevent cross-border attacks that killed two people. “Measures are being taken to prevent similar events in the future,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, warned the West against supplying Ukraine with more weapons as key Kiev donors President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met in Washington.

Scholz’s first trip to Washington since February 2022 offers leaders an opportunity to demonstrate their determination to support Ukraine against Russia.

But the Kremlin said the supplies would only weigh on Western economies and have no impact on fighting on the ground.

“(Arms transfers) put a significant strain on the economies of these countries and affect the well-being of the citizens of these countries, including Germany,” Peskow told reporters.

“It is clear that this will prolong the conflict and have sad consequences for the Ukrainian people,” he added.

A Ukrainian soldier gestures as he rides a tank on a road towards the frontline town of Bakhmut, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine, in Khasiv Yar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 2

A still from a video released by the press office of Russian Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin shows what he believes are Wagner fighters holding a flag atop a building in this still from a video released in March in Bakhmut, Ukraine, booth 2 was released.

A Russian tank was brought down by an explosive device near Bakhmut by a drone on Wednesday

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on both sides are believed to have died since Russia invaded its pro-Western neighbor a year ago, on February 24, 2022.

Moscow, which says it has annexed nearly a fifth of Ukraine, accuses Kiev of being a security risk. Ukraine and its allies say the invasion was an unprovoked war over land – an imperialist land grab by an increasingly aggressive Putin.

On the sidelines of a G20 meeting of foreign ministers in India, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for the first time since the invasion.

Blinken urged Lavrov to end the war and urged Moscow to reverse the suspension of the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty announced last week, US officials said.

Speaking at a forum in the Indian capital on Friday, Blinken said Russia must not go to war with impunity, otherwise it would “send a message to potential attackers everywhere that they can get away with it too.”