700 dead near Bakhmut, Russia names fourth Western District commander since start of war. What happened on the front line on December 27?

Nikiforov is indeed connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin: according to the Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), Wagner PMC mercenaries took part in the occupation of Donbas in 2014, and obeyed Nikiforov's orders.

On August 22, 2016, Nikiforov was included in a list of those accused of “crimes against the foundations of national security of Ukraine, peace and international law and order” by the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine. Ukraine accused him of causing the crash of a Ukrainian Il-76MD military transport plane delivering ammunition and armored vehicles to the AFU defending Luhansk airport on June 14, 2014. The plane was shot down and crashed near the village of Chervone, 2 km from the runway. Forty-nine people were killed.

In 2019, the SBU reported that Nikiforov gave the order to shoot down the plane. The order was carried out by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, with one of them – Dmitry Utkin with the call sign “Wagner” – being the co-founder of the Wagner PMC.

“The order was given directly by the commander of the 58th Army of the Russian Armed Forces, Major-General Evgeny Nikiforov, who was sent to Donbas to carry out a military invasion and occupation of part of the territory of our sovereign country. The perpetrators of the killing of Ukrainian soldiers, Dmitriy Utkin, Andrey Guralev and Andrey Lebedev, were awarded official state decorations by [Vladimir] Putin after their return to Russia: [more specifically} the Order of Courage.”