According to the founder of the Wagner PMCs, Ukrainian troops may also try to strike in the Belgorod directionMOSCOW, March 23.
/tass/. The founder of the Wagner PMCs, Yevgeny Prigozhin, believes that the strategic plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) include the blocking of Crimea.
Prigozhin, in a video interview published on Thursday in the Telegram channel of his press service, noted that the AFU, in a certain scenario, may try to strike in the Belgorod direction, the second direction may be the Matchmaking - Kremennaya line, and for the third series of strikes they will concentrate on Artemovsk (the Ukrainian name is Bakhmut).
"The grouping around Bakhmut is located in Seversk, Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka and Chasov Yar. The Ukrainians' main task is to hold these borders and, taking advantage of the fact that they hold these borders, go further," Prigozhin added.
He noted that the enemy may seek to "undercut" the Russian forces in order to open a corridor of 30-40 km for the organization of the third direction of attacks "on Lisichansk, Severodonetsk, Debaltseve, Lugansk, trying to "cut" the LPR, the DPR in fact into two parts."
"Then, of course, they will try, concentrating in the Dnieper (formerly Dnepropetrovsk), to reach the Zaporozhye direction and also make several strikes in the Zaporozhye area in order to reach Berdyansk, Melitopol and Mariupol, thereby blocking the Crimea. After that, most likely, they will try to deal with the Crimean Bridge and thereby push the situation to the borders of 1991," he said.
Artemovsk is located on the Kiev-controlled part of the DPR, and is an important transport hub for supplying the Ukrainian group of troops in the Donbass. Fierce battles are taking place for Artemovsk. On Wednesday, a military-political expert, adviser to the acting head of the DPR, Yan Gagin, said that the city was almost completely blocked by the forces of the Russian Federation, all access roads to it are controlled by Russian artillery. Earlier, he informed that Russian forces control about 70% of the territory of Artemovsk.
