The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has announced the commencement of the withdrawal of his forces from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

He has stated that control of the city will be handed over to the Russian army by 1 June, although the Ukrainian government claims that it still maintains control over certain areas within the city.

Prigozhin has also declared that his forces are prepared to return if the Russian regular army is unable to effectively manage the situation in Bakhmut. The battle for the city has been the longest and most violent of the entire war.

The Wagner mercenaries have played a prominent role in the fighting on behalf of the Russian side, with Prigozhin recently stating that approximately 20,000 of his fighters have lost their lives in Bakhmut. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, has released a video on Telegram confirming the withdrawal of his units from Bakhmut.

The video, geolocated by BBC Verify to an area near a pharmacy in the eastern part of Bakhmut, shows Prigozhin instructing his fighters to leave ammunition for the Russian army. He also mentions that some Wagner fighters will remain behind to support the Russian troops.

Prigozhin has been openly critical of top Russian military officials, accusing them of not providing adequate support to his forces. Last month, he even threatened to withdraw his troops from Bakhmut if they did not receive the necessary ammunition.

However, despite Wagner's announcement of handing over Bakhmut, Ukraine has not acknowledged the city's fall.

Hanna Maliar, Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister, stated on Thursday that Ukrainian forces still maintain control over part of the Litak district in the southwest of the city. She posted on Telegram that while the enemy has replaced Wagner units in the suburbs with regular army troops, Wagner forces are still present within the city itself.

According to analysts, Bakhmut holds limited strategic importance for Moscow. However, its capture would represent a symbolic victory for Russia, given that it has been the site of the longest battle in the Ukrainian war thus far.

The Wagner mercenaries have focused their efforts on Bakhmut for months, employing a relentless and costly tactic of sending waves of fighters, which appears to have gradually worn down Kyiv's resistance.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, as the leader of the Wagner group, has become a significant figure in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022. He has recruited thousands of convicted criminals, regardless of the severity of their crimes, to fight for Wagner in Ukraine.

Prigozhin stated that about half of the 20,000 Wagner fighters who died in Bakhmut were convicts. The exact figures provided by the US, claiming that over 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and 80,000 wounded in the battle for Bakhmut, cannot be independently verified by the BBC.

Ukraine has not released casualty figures for Bakhmut, but it has also suffered significant losses in the fighting.

The capture of Bakhmut would bring Russia a step closer to its objective of controlling the entire Donetsk region, which was annexed by Russia in September of the previous year following referendums widely condemned as illegitimate outside of Russia.

However, when Russia fought to claim the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last summer, Ukraine swiftly regained control over large portions of territory elsewhere.

Before the invasion, Bakhmut had a population of approximately 70,000 people, but now only a few thousand remain in the devastated city, which was once known for its salt and gypsum mines and a large winery.