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By David Brennan
Diplomatic Correspondent
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A spokesperson for Ukraine's armed forces has said that Russian Wagner Group mercenaries withdrawing from the city of Bakhmut are being replaced with regular Russian airborne and motorized troops.
Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces fighting in the region, said Kyiv has gathered information on the new units being deployed to the Bakhmut area and claimed that replacement forces have already suffered significant losses. The city finally fell to Russian forces last week after months of combat.
"Rotational measures are taking place there primarily because of the large losses of the Wagner criminal group," Cherevatyi said, according to news outlet Ukrinform. "They are forced to do it. Units of the occupier's airborne troops and motor rifle units are entering. We know their names, we know their commanders and their combat potential."
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Those formations arriving have already suffered significant losses and are largely staffed by newly mobilized troops, the spokesperson said.
"For the most part, this is already the second or third composition of their personnel," Cherevatyi said.
Russian forces last week celebrated the capture of Bakhmut, which has reportedly been entirely destroyed during nine months of intense fighting. The city has become synonymous with Russia's grinding, attritional warfare in the eastern Donbas region.
Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides are thought to have been killed in the fighting over the small city. Kyiv has continued to send reinforcements to the area in recent months, despite continued assertions from Ukrainian and NATO officials that the city was not strategically important.
The battle has also served as a stage for the struggle for influence between top Russian military officials and Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. He has repeatedly accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of intentionally undersupplying Wagner units.
Prigozhin said at the start of May that he would pull his troops out of the city "because, in the absence of ammunition, they are doomed to senseless death." He later reversed the decision when fresh supplies were directed to Wagner forces. Following Bakhmut's fall last week, Prigozhin said that his mercenaries had begun withdrawing and were handing over positions to Russian regular troops.
Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst and visiting scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek that Wagner's apparent withdrawal can be seen through a lens of constant political jockeying within Kremlin power structures.
The friction between Prigozhin and the regular Russian military, Luzin said, is "a classic inter-agency bureaucratic conflict typical for authoritarian systems. Prigozhin is a front man, a manager of the state-sponsored mercenaries within the Russian political system.
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"For him—and for his bosses and coordinators—these mercenaries and financial flows aimed towards their operations are assets within the so called 'administrative market.' He needs to keep these assets in his aim to maintain his position within the Russian political-administrative system.
"Bakhmut is a toxic asset in this case, and Prigozhin needs to give up this asset before it eliminates the value of the main asset: the mercenaries. Moreover, the mercenaries are hardly capable of defensive operations."
Cherevatyi said Russian attacks in the Bakhmut area are ongoing, and that on Monday Moscow's forces launched 373 strikes and six air attacks on Ukrainian positions.
"We responded with fire damage during which 155 occupiers were killed and 116 were injured," he said.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.
Update 5/30/23 9:16 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Pavel Luzin.
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