The head of the Russ­ian pri­vate army Wag­n­er says his force lost more than 20,000 men in the drawn-out bat­tle for Bakhmut. He said about half of those who died in the east­ern Ukrain­ian city were Russ­ian con­victs re­cruit­ed to fight in the 15-month-old war.

The fig­ure stood in stark con­trast to the wide­ly dis­put­ed claims from Moscow that just over 6,000 of its troops were killed in the war as of Jan­u­ary. That com­pares with of­fi­cial So­vi­et loss­es in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops be­tween 1979-89. Ukraine hasn’t said how many of its sol­diers have died since Rus­sia’s full-scale in­va­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

An­a­lysts be­lieve the nine-month fight for Bakhmut alone has cost the lives of tens of thou­sands of sol­diers, among them con­victs who re­port­ed­ly re­ceived lit­tle train­ing be­fore be­ing sent to the front.

Rus­sia’s in­va­sion goal of “de­mil­i­ta­riz­ing” Ukraine has back­fired be­cause Kyiv’s mil­i­tary has be­come stronger with the sup­ply of weapons and train­ing by its West­ern al­lies, Wag­n­er chief Yevge­ny Prigozhin said in an in­ter­view pub­lished late Tues­day with Kon­stan­tin Dol­gov, a pro-Krem­lin po­lit­i­cal strate­gist.

Prigozhin al­so said the Krem­lin’s forces had killed civil­ians dur­ing the war, some­thing Moscow has re­peat­ed­ly and ve­he­ment­ly de­nied.

Prigozhin, a wealthy busi­ness­man with long­time links to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, is known for his blus­ter — of­ten spiced with ob­scen­i­ties — and has pre­vi­ous­ly made un­ver­i­fi­able claims, some of which he lat­er back­tracked on.

Ear­li­er this month, his spokes­peo­ple pub­lished a video of him shout­ing, swear­ing and point­ing at about 30 uni­formed bod­ies ly­ing on the ground, say­ing they were Wag­n­er fight­ers who died in a sin­gle day. He claimed the Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry had starved his men of am­mu­ni­tion and threat­ened to give up the fight for Bakhmut.

He al­so said in Tues­day’s in­ter­view it was pos­si­ble that Kyiv’s an­tic­i­pat­ed coun­terof­fen­sive in com­ing weeks, giv­en con­tin­ued West­ern sup­port, might push Russ­ian forces out of south­ern and east­ern Ukraine as well as an­nexed Crimea.

“A pes­simistic sce­nario: the Ukraini­ans are giv­en mis­siles, they pre­pare troops, of course they will con­tin­ue their of­fen­sive, try to coun­ter­at­tack,” he said. “They will at­tack Crimea, they will try to blow up the Crimean bridge (to the Russ­ian main­land), cut off (our) sup­ply lines. There­fore we need to pre­pare for a hard war.”

Prigozhin’s in­ter­view, post­ed in a Telegram chan­nel that has on­ly 50,000 fol­low­ers, wasn’t picked up by Rus­sia’s largest state-run or pro-Krem­lin me­dia and is un­like­ly to be wide­ly seen. Nor did it ap­pear to get any men­tions among mil­i­tary blog­gers, whose pop­u­lar Telegram pages are im­por­tant sources of in­for­ma­tion about the war to many Rus­sians.

The Ukrain­ian Gen­er­al Staff said Wednes­day that “heavy fight­ing” was con­tin­u­ing in­side Bakhmut, days af­ter Rus­sia said that it had com­plete­ly cap­tured the dev­as­tat­ed city.

Bakhmut lies in Donet­sk province, one of four provinces Rus­sia il­le­gal­ly an­nexed last fall and on­ly par­tial­ly con­trols.

The head of Ukraine’s ground forces, Olek­san­dr Syrskyi, said that Kyiv’s forces “are con­tin­u­ing their de­fen­sive op­er­a­tion” in Bakhmut, and had achieved un­spec­i­fied “suc­cess­es” on the city’s out­skirts. He gave no fur­ther de­tails.

A Ukrain­ian com­man­der in Bakhmut told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Tues­day that the Ukraini­ans had a plan to push the Rus­sians out of all oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ry.

“But now we don’t need to fight in Bakhmut, we need to sur­round it from flanks and block it,” Yevhen Mezhe­vikin said. “Then we should ‘sweep’ it. This is more ap­pro­pri­ate, and that’s what we are do­ing now.”

Else­where, Russ­ian forces shot down “a large num­ber” of drones in Rus­sia’s south­ern Bel­go­rod re­gion, a lo­cal of­fi­cial said Wednes­day, a day af­ter Moscow an­nounced that its forces crushed a cross-bor­der raid in the area from Ukraine.

The drones were in­ter­cept­ed overnight, Bel­go­rod Gov. Vy­ach­eslav Glad­kov said in a Telegram post, and an­oth­er one was shot down Wednes­day just out­side the lo­cal cap­i­tal, al­so called Bel­go­rod. He said that no one had been hurt, but there was un­spec­i­fied dam­age to prop­er­ty.

Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials made no im­me­di­ate com­ment.

Glad­kov, the re­gion­al gov­er­nor, said on Tues­day evening he had “ques­tions for (Rus­sia’s) De­fense Min­istry” fol­low­ing the at­tack that re­port­ed­ly sowed alarm among lo­cals and em­bar­rassed the Krem­lin.

Dur­ing a Q&A ses­sion with res­i­dents on so­cial me­dia, Glad­kov agreed with a par­tic­i­pant who said that the Russ­ian mil­i­tary’s ac­tions in Bel­go­rod “raised some ques­tions."

In Moscow, Rus­sia’s de­fense chief, Sergei Shoigu, vowed to re­spond “prompt­ly and ex­treme­ly harsh­ly” to such at­tacks in the fu­ture.

On Tues­day, Rus­sia said it had beat­en back the cross-bor­der raid, one of the most se­ri­ous at­tacks of its kind dur­ing the war. The De­fense Min­istry said more than 70 at­tack­ers were killed in the bat­tle, which last­ed around 24 hours. It made no men­tion of any Russ­ian ca­su­al­ties.

Min­istry spokesman Ig­or Konashenkov said that lo­cal troops, airstrikes and ar­tillery rout­ed the at­tack­ers.

Twelve lo­cal civil­ians were wound­ed in the at­tack, of­fi­cials said, and an old­er woman died dur­ing an evac­u­a­tion.

De­tails of the in­ci­dent in the rur­al re­gion, ly­ing about 80 kilo­me­ters (45 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv in east­ern Ukraine and far from the front lines of the al­most 15-month war, are un­clear.

Moscow blamed the in­cur­sion that be­gan Mon­day on Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary sabo­teurs. Kyiv de­scribed it as an up­ris­ing against the Krem­lin by Russ­ian par­ti­sans. It was im­pos­si­ble to rec­on­cile the two ver­sions, to say with cer­tain­ty who was be­hind the at­tack or to as­cer­tain its aims.

The re­gion is a Russ­ian mil­i­tary hub hold­ing fu­el and am­mu­ni­tion de­pots. Moscow of­fi­cials de­clined to say how many at­tack­ers were in­volved or com­ment on why ef­forts to put down the as­sault took so long.

The Bel­go­rod re­gion, like the neigh­bor­ing Bryan­sk re­gion and oth­er bor­der ar­eas, has wit­nessed spo­radic spillover from the war, which Rus­sia start­ed by in­vad­ing Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

At least three civil­ians died and 18 oth­ers were wound­ed in Ukraine on Tues­day and overnight, the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial of­fice re­port­ed Wednes­day, in­clud­ing in the south­ern Kher­son re­gion, where two el­der­ly peo­ple died in air strikes.

___

Ko­zlows­ka re­port­ed from Lon­don. Yuras Kar­manau con­tributed to this re­port from Tallinn, Es­to­nia.

___

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —