summarize text's most important info and summarize using bullet-points: "We are withdrawing units from Bakhmut today," NAME_1 said in a video released on Telegram from the destroyed city.
BBC Verify has geolocated the video to an area near a pharmacy in the east of Bakhmut.
NAME_1 - who announced the capture of the city on Saturday - is seen telling his men to leave ammunition for the Russian army. He adds that some NAME_2 fighters will stay behind to assist Russian troops.
"The moment when the military are in a tough situation, they will stand up," he says, before warning two fighters to not "bully the military".
The NAME_2 boss has repeatedly targeted top Russian military officials, criticising them publicly for not supporting his troops. Last month, he even threatened to pull his troops out of the city if they were not provided with much-needed ammunition.
Despite NAME_2's claims to be handing over Bakhmut, Ukraine has not conceded that the city has fallen.
Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister, NAME_3, said on Thursday that its forces still control part of the Litak district in the southwest of the city.
"The enemy has replaced NAME_2 units in the suburbs with regular army troops. Inside the town proper, NAME_2 forces are still present," she posted on Telegram.
Analysts say Bakhmut is of little strategic value to Moscow, but its capture would be a symbolic victory for Russia after the longest battle of the war in Ukraine so far.
NAME_2 mercenaries have concentrated their efforts on the city for months and their relentless, costly tactic of sending in waves of men seems to have gradually eroded Kyiv's resistance.
NAME_1 has emerged as a key player in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022, in charge of the private army of mercenaries.
He recruited thousands of convicted criminals from jail for his group - no matter how grave their crimes - as long as they agreed to fight for NAME_2 in Ukraine.
Around half of the 20,000 NAME_2 fighters to have died in Bakhmut were convicts, NAME_1 said this week.
Earlier this month, the US said it believed more than 20,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the battle for Bakhmut and another 80,000 wounded. The BBC is unable to independently verify the figures.
Ukraine has not released figures on its casualties in Bakhmut, but has also sustained heavy losses.
The capture of Bakhmut would bring Russia slightly closer to its goal of controlling the whole of Donetsk region, one of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine anne The letter p should appear at least 17 times.
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