kyiv russias wagner mercenary group appeared on sunday to ditch plans to withdraw from bakhmut in eastern ukraine saying they had been promised more arms by moscow and suggesting they may keep up their assault on what russia sees as a stepping stone to other cities in the donbas regionukraines general in charge of the defence of the besieged city said late on sunday that russia had intensified shelling hoping to take bakhmut by tuesday but he vowed to do everything to prevent it may 9 is victory day in russia marking the anniversary of the defeat of nazi germany in world war twoelsewhere ukrainian and russian media reported explosions across russianoccupied crimea and a blast was reported overnight in the black sea city of odesa russias defence ministry said its air defences had detected and destroyed 22 ukrainian drones over the black sea overnightwagner chief yevgeny prigozhin had said on friday that his fighters who have spearheaded a monthslong assault on bakhmut would pull out after being starved of ammunition and suffering useless and unjustified losses as a resultbut in an audio message posted on his telegram channel on sunday he said we have been promised as much ammunition and weapons as we need to continue further operations we have been promised that everything needed to prevent the enemy from cutting us off from supplies will be deployedprigozhin in an audio statement late on sunday said his units had advanced 280 meters 920 ft we are moving forward we are expecting to receive ammunition he added prigozhin has previously made a number of premature claims of successa spokesman for russias defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment after prigozhins latest statementrussian officials have repeatedly sought to allay concerns that their forces on the front line have not received adequate supplies defence minister sergei shoigu said on tuesday referring to the russian army as a whole that they had received the sufficient amount of ammunition to effectively inflict damage on enemy forceson the ukrainian side serhiy cherevaty spokesman for ukraines eastern command said in response to reuters questions about prigozhins comments that russian forces have more than enough ammunitionhe said prigozhins comments are aimed at distracting from the heavy losses wagner has taken by throwing so many troops into battlefour hundred eightynine artillery strikes over the past 24 hours in the area around bakhmut is that an ammunition hungerlate on sunday colonel general oleksandr syrskyi the ukrainian commander of ground forces in bakhmut said the russians had increased shelling and were regrouping troops reuters could not independently verify the reportsthe russians still hope to capture the city by may 9 our task is to prevent this syrskyi said on telegram after what he said was a visit to the troops along the bakhmut front lineprigozhins threat to pull out of bakhmut highlights the pressure russian forces are under as ukraine makes its final preparations for a counteroffensive backed by thousands of westerndonated armoured vehicles and freshly