Fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut remained "particularly hot", President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, giving no indication the city had finally fallen to Russia as claimed by the founder of the Wagner mercenary force. Yevgeny Prigozhin said his troops, involved in a months-long effort to encircle and capture the bombed-out city, had raised a Russian flag on its administrative building. "Thank you to our soldiers who are fighting in Avdiivka, Maryinka, and Bakhmut," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. "Especially Bakhmut. It is especially hot there."