Russian mercenary boss says wants Ukraine’s Bakhmut for its ‘underground cities’

The founder of Russia’s most high-profile Wagner Group said on Saturday he wanted his forces and the regular Russian army to capture the small city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine because it possessed “underground cities” that can hold troops and tanks.

Russia’s grinding more than five months-long push to try to take Bakhmut has puzzled some Western military analysts who have said that heavy losses incurred on the Ukrainian side and the fact that Ukraine has built defensive lines to fall back to nearby mean any Russian victory there, if it happens, would be pyrrhic.