Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner Group Boss Says He Will Troops Out Of Bakhmut
In a dispute over ammunition, the leader of the Russian Wagner Group has threatened to pull his forces out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Wednesday.
He made this declaration after posting a video on social media in which he was seen strolling among the remains of fallen warriors and pleading with defense officials for more supplies.
Despite the city having no strategic relevance, Russia has been attempting to take it over for months.
Yevgeny Prigozhin directly blamed the defense ministry for the choice.
“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the armament?They came here willingly and gave their lives so that you may fill up in your mahogany offices.
Prigozhin frequently directed his ire at Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
He only recently revealed to a Russian pro-war blogger that Wagner fighters in Bakhmut were on the verge of running out of ammo and required thousands of rounds.
He warned that if shortages persisted, his mercenaries would have little choice but to flee or fight on in vain: “Then, no matter what our bureaucrats want, everything else will crumble.”
According to Prigozhin, his troops have promised to remain in Bakhmut till May 10 to allow Russia to observe Victory Day on Tuesday.
In February, he posted another image of his dead troops and blamed army chiefs for their deaths. Although the military denied deliberately starving his Wagner group of shells, at the time they did respond by increasing supplies to the front line.
In his announcement, standing in front of his men, he said on 10 May they would be “obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds”.
The battle for Bakhmut has dragged dragged for months and is thought to have claimed thousands of lives. Ukraine’s armed forces decided to defend the city at all costs in an apparent attempt to focus Russian military resources on one place of relatively little significance.
US-based military analyst Rob Lee argues that Wagner’s latest complaint of shortages likely reflects Russia’s defence ministry rationing ammunition ahead of Ukraine’s long anticipated counter-offensive. The ministry has to defend the whole front, but Prigozhin’s sole concern lies in taking Bakhmut, he wrote on Twitter.
Prigozhin has himself predicted that Ukraine’s counter-offensive will begin by 15 May, as tanks and artillery will be able to advance in dry weather, after the last spring rain.
In a separate move, Prigozhin appears to have hired an army general who was recently dismissed as logistics chief.
Col-Gen Mikhail Mizintsev was dubbed the butcher of Mariupol for his role in last year’s bombardment of Ukraine’s southern port city, captured by Russian forces a year ago.
Videos posted on online show in at a Wagner training camp and then visiting positions in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin said earlier he had offered him the post of deputy to a Wagner commander, pointing out that the general had done his best to help supply mercenaries with ammunition and had co-operated with the group’s efforts to recruit convicted prisoners to its ranks.
Col-Gen Mizintsev was only put in charge of army logistics last September, shortly after Prigozhin was filmed inside a Russian prison telling inmates they would be freed from jail if they served with his men in Ukraine.