MOSCOW, March 6 east of the country, said Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of Vladimir Zelensky's office.
Founder of the «Wagner» group Yevgeny Prigozhin previously announced the creation of Ukrainian military groups around Artemivsk, including groups in Slavyansk, Seversk, Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka.
«There is a consensus among the military on the need to continue defending the city and attrition of enemy forces, while building … new lines of defense in case the situation changes,» Podolyak told Agence France-Presse.
Artemivsk is located in the part of the DPR controlled by Kyiv so far, north of the large city of Gorlovka, and is an important transport hub for supplying the Ukrainian group of troops in the Donbass.
In early March, the founder of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that the fighters of the group had practically surrounded Artemovsk, the adviser to the acting head of the DPR, Yan Gagin, also said on Monday. On Saturday, two Ukrainian security officials immediately reported that their units had received an order to leave Artemivsk — this is the commander with the call sign «Magyar» and the ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko, now the commander of a platoon of attack drones. Earlier, a member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Sergei Rakhmanin, said that the situation in Artemivsk was critical. /wp-content/uploads/8fdf0a3dd7d7572f70d5f67d64ac2fbc.jpg» />Infographic