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Romney wins 3 primaries as Santorum faces uphill battle

Rick Santorum turns his focus to his home state of Pennsylvania as he faces an uphill battle to convince Republicans he can stop Mitt Romney from clinching the party nomination after his three-primary sweep.

(CNN) Milwaukee - Romney's wins in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia put him past the halfway mark to the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination and add to a wide lead over other GOP presidential candidates, according to CNN estimates.

Yet Santorum indicated Tuesday night he would compete in the April 24 primaries in five states, including Pennsylvania, where his campaign hopes a win would be a gateway to a run of May primaries in states where he can capitalize on higher percentages of conservative voters.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Prigozhin's Last Bluff? What Will Happen If Wagner Group Really Pulls Out Of Bakhmut

Having claimed conquest over Bakhumt, Wagner Boss Yevgeny Prigozhin says his troops will begin to leave the city Thursday and hand control over to the official Russian army. But there are plenty, especially inside of Russia, who have no interest in seeing Wagner go. A showdown with the Kremlin looms.

phot of fighters of the Wagner Private Military Company raise a Russian flag over the city of Artyomovsk

Wagner Group Says Russian Forces Have Taken Bakhmut

TASS/ZUMA
Anna Akage

-Analysis-

Tucked into his rambling, megalomaniacal and (according to Kyiv) premature victory speech in Bakhmut over the weekend, Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin offered one very precise piece of information:

The mercenary army that he leads would begin to pull out of the eastern Ukrainian city on May 25. On Monday, he repeated the vow, saying Wagner's withdrawal would be complete by June 1.

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What happens now as we count down the days and hours to this would-be deadline will tell us more about the situation on the ground in Bakhmut than any declarations. But even more importantly, it may be decisive in the longstanding feud between Prigozhin and the upper echelons of the official Russian military hierarchy — and as such, crucial to the fate of the entire war.

"The operation to take Bakhmut lasted 224 days, the Bakhmut meat grinder," is how Prigozhin began his victory speech on Saturday. “To give the battered Russian army a chance to come to its senses."

He said that only Wagner fighters, who had to fight the Russian bureaucracy in parallel, took part in the battles for Bakhmut on the Russian side.

As he’d done before, he called out by name Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian army commander Valery Gerasimov:

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