Wagner Chief: Russia Needs 2 Years To Capture Donbas

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Kremlin’s Wagner mercenary group, has said that it will take up to two years for Russian forces to capture the Donbas region, George Styllis reported for The Telegraph.

Photo Insert: The Wagner chief's comments are a rare admission by a senior Kremlin-linked official that the Russian military will be in Ukraine for several years.

His comments are a rare admission by a senior Kremlin-linked official that the Russian military will be in Ukraine for several years. “If we need to reach the Dnieper (Dnipro river), that’ll take three years,” Prigozhin said in the interview with Semyon Pegov, a pro-war mil blogger.

“If we want to close down the whole of Donetsk and Luhansk, then we need to work for at least one-and-a-half to two years,” he said, referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Donbas, which the Kremlin illegally annexed last year.

Russian forces have launched a general push along the frontline, with the Vuhledar emerging as a critical hot spot in the fight for Donetsk province.

The town would give both sides, the Ukrainian forces that hold the urban center, and the Russians positioned in the suburbs, a tactical upper hand in the greater battle for the Donbas region.

However, in an assault on Vuhledar, Russian forces retreated in disarray after Ukrainian forces destroyed 30 tanks and fighting vehicles, including the much-ballyhooed BMP Terminator that was wrecked by anti-tank missiles.

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