Prigozhin's unexpected move: "We captured Bakhmut, and now we are leaving"

Prigozhin's unexpected move: "We captured Bakhmut, and now we are leaving"

He added that they will leave the conflict zone in that area within the next week.

"We conquered the entire territory of Bakhmut, as we promised, until the last centimeter, today we did not conquer anything," Prigozhin said in an audio message on Telegram.

He said that he would hand over the territory of Bakhmut to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Reuters reported.

"As we said yesterday - we are handing over our positions to the Ministry of Defense and on May 25 we are leaving the conflict zone," Prigozhin said on Saturday, saying that his forces had taken over Bakhmut, after a nine-month siege of that city in eastern Ukraine. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied that Bakhmut fell into the hands of Russian forces. Reuters said it could not confirm reports from the front line.