Ukraine on Sunday denied Bakhmut had fallen to Russian troops in the longest battle of the war and said it was instead advancing around the suburbs, making it “very difficult” for Russian troops to stay in the devastated city.

A day after President Vladimir Putin congratulated his troops and private mercenary group Wagner who claimed to have taken the city in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested it would be a pyrrhic victory for Moscow.

“You have to understand there is nothing” there in Bakhmut, he said, sat next to US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.

“For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts.”

Zelensky’s spokesman later clarified that the Ukrainian president was not confirming the loss of Bakhmut to Russian troops.

[I mean, Zelensky may be getting ahead of himself here. He’s IN Japan and comparing Bakhmut…to HIROSHIMA? No, no, no. I’ve been in Hiroshima. I also know what Hiroshima means to the Japanese people. I know he loves his inflammatory rhetoric, but PR-wise? Not well done at all. ~ Beege]