Yevgeny Prigozhin: The head of the Wagner Group says that he will withdraw the troops from Bakhmut

[ad_1]

May 5, 2023, 09:16 GMT

Updated 10 minutes ago

Image source, Concord Press Service

photo caption,

Yevgeny Prigozhin has issued a series of angry statements directed at the Russian government in recent months

The leader of the Russian Wagner Group has threatened to withdraw his forces from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Wednesday, in a dispute over ammunition.

His statement came after he posted a video on social media of him walking among the corpses of fighters, asking defense officials for more supplies.

Russia has been trying to capture the city for months, despite its questionable strategic value.

Yevgeny Prigozhin directly commented on the decision to the Ministry of Defense.

“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where’s…the ammunition?…they come here as volunteers and are dying for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany desks.”

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov were the focus of Prigozhin’s anger.

Prigozhin is a student of publicity, and his influence appears to have waned in recent months. He had previously made threats which he did not follow through – and then dismissed as a joke and military humor.

Just last week he told a Russian pro-war blogger that the Wagner fighters at Bakhmut were in their last days out of bullet supplies, and they needed thousands of rounds of ammunition.

He warned that if the shortage was not addressed his mercenaries would either be forced to retreat or stay and die: “Then, no matter what our bureaucrats want, everything else will collapse.”

Image source, Concord Press Service

photo caption,

Yevgeny Prigozhin announces his intention to withdraw from Bakhmut

The Battle of Bakhmut lasted for months and is believed to have claimed thousands of lives. Wagner’s forces and the Russian regular forces fought on the same side against the Ukrainian army.

Ukraine decided to defend the city at all costs in an apparent effort to focus Russian military resources on one place of relatively little importance.

Prigozhin said his forces agreed to stay in Bakhmut until May 10 to allow Russia to celebrate Victory Day on Tuesday.

In February, he posted another photo of his dead troops and blamed the army commanders for their deaths. Although the Army denied intentionally starving its Wagner bomb squad, they responded at the time by ramping up supplies to the front lines.

In his new declaration, standing before his men, he said on May 10 that they would “have to transfer the sites in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the Ministry of Defense and drag Wagner’s remains to logistical camps to lick our wounds.” .

US-based military analyst Rob Lee argues that Wagner’s latest complaint of shortages likely reflects the Russian Defense Ministry’s rationing of ammunition ahead of the long-awaited counteroffensive in Ukraine.

He wrote on Twitter that the Ministry must defend the entire front, but Prigozhin’s only concern lies in capturing Bakhmut.

Prigozhin himself expected the Ukrainian counter-offensive to begin by 15 May, when tanks and artillery would be able to advance in dry weather, after the last spring rains.

In a separate move, Prigozhin appears to have appointed a recently fired army general as chief of logistics.

Colonel Mikhail Mezentsev has been dubbed the butcher of Mariupol for his role in last year’s bombing of Ukraine’s southern port city, which Russian forces captured a year earlier.

Videos posted online showed the Wagner training camp and then site visits in Bakhmut.

Prigozhin said earlier that he was offered the position of deputy commander of Wagner, noting that the general did his best to help supply the mercenaries with ammunition and cooperated with the group’s efforts to recruit convicted prisoners into its ranks.

Col. Gen. Mezentsev was put in charge of army logistics last September, shortly after Prigozhin was filmed inside a Russian prison telling inmates they would be released from prison if they served with his men in Ukraine.

[ad_2]