-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.

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: