- Vilan Chatterjee
- BBC News
image copyright Serhiy Haidai
The hotel where the group has its headquarters in Kadievka
The governor of the city of Luhansk, Serhiy Hayday, said that the Ukrainian forces bombed one of the headquarters of the Russian “Wagner” mercenary group in eastern Ukraine.
Hayday revealed the bombing of a hotel where the group was based in Kadivka, Luhansk. He added that there were heavy Russian losses.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify the presence of Wagner agents at the hotel.
According to Western experts, the Wagner Group is government-funded to act in accordance with the interests of the Kremlin.
The group was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former restaurateur and close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It has been repeatedly accused of war crimes and violations against humanity.
Units of Wagner took part in the battles for the Crimea, Syria, Mali and the Central African Republic.
Hayday described the strike that targeted the hotel in Kadievka, as causing Russia “great losses,” and predicted that “at least 50 percent of the surviving forces will die due to lack of medical treatment.”
The targeting of the hotel comes amid the intensification of the conflict in southern Ukraine, with Russia using drones to bomb Odessa, and the fighting has returned to Melitopol.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian army announced that it had shot down 10 drones, including five that bombed energy facilities and cut off electricity for 1.5 million people.
“The situation in the Odessa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised evening address.
“Unfortunately, the strikes were serious, so it is more than a matter of time to restore electricity. It will not take hours, but days,” he added.
According to Ukrainian officials, Russia has bombed key infrastructure with Iranian-made drones.
The pro-Russian authorities in Multiplepol said a missile attack killed two people and wounded 10 others. Pictures released by the Moscow-appointed governor showed a large fire.
image copyright BalitskyEV
Pictures of the fire released by the pro-Russian authorities in Melitopol
“The air defense systems destroyed two missiles and four (missiles) hit their targets,” Yevgeny Paltisky, the Moscow-appointed governor of a part of the Zaporizhia region, said on Telegram.
He added that a “recreation center” where people were eating was destroyed in the attack. And that the Ukrainian forces used Himars missile launchers supplied by the United States.
This weapon played an important role in the Ukrainian counterattack, and was used to target sites far from the front lines, including the Russian command headquarters.
Melitopol has been under Russian occupation since the beginning of March, and is a key logistical location for Russian forces in the southeast.
Ukraine says its efforts to take back the occupied territory are continuing, despite the onset of winter.
Most of the fighting has taken place in the east of the country in recent weeks, particularly around the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
And the advisor to the Ukrainian President, Oleksiy Aristovich, indicated on Saturday evening that Melitopol may be the main target of the Ukrainian forces.
He said in an interview: “If Melitopol falls, the entire defensive line will collapse, all the way to Kherson.”
He added that if this is achieved, “Ukrainian forces will have a direct path to Crimea,” the peninsula that Russia invaded and annexed in 2014.