CNN journalists, citing Western officials, claim that the fighters of the Wagner private military company are the dominant forces in the Bakhmut area "with occasional support from Russian regular forces, and that appears to be dwindling down at the moment."
"Prigozhin’s rather emotional outburst is because he sees himself as not only running out of human resource, but now he is also running out of Russian artillery support to provide an offset these losses," they said.
The officials added that the mortality rate among Wagner's fighters "have been significantly higher than of the Russian Armed Forces."
In particular, they claimed that Bakhmut "doesn’t hold any operational strategic significance" for either Russia or Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are currently surrounded on three sides, but can withdraw their units.
"They have shown previously that they are very adept to withdrawing when they need to, or when they feel they need to," the officials added.
Earlier, Western media reported that Russia had lost 20,000 to 30,000 troops trying to take Bakhmut.
On March 1, the spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhiy Cherevatyi, said that the Ukrainian command had not decided to withdraw troops from Bakhmut, Donetsk region, but could do so to save the lives of personnel.