Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of Russia’s Wagner Group has threatened to withdraw his troops from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, accusing Russia’s military command of starving his forces of ammunition and causing them heavy losses.
Prigozhin claimed that the Wagner mercenary group had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9, 2023. That day marks Victory Day, a major Russian holiday marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
However, the Wagner leader stated that his force has not received enough artillery ammunition supplies from the Russian military since Monday, May 1, 2023. Prigozhin has previously made unverifiable claims and made threats that he has not carried out.
Prigozhin’s spokespeople published a video of him angrily demanding ammunition from Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu and General Staff Chief, Valery Gerasimov. “Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the… ammunition?… They came here as volunteers and die for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany offices,” he said.
In the video, Prigozhin stood in front of around 30 uniformed bodies lying on the ground. He said they are the bodies of Wagner fighters who died on Thursday, May 4, 2023 alone. Prigozhin spoke in a furious tone and used numerous expletives in the video.
“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin said, pointing at the bodies. “The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell,” he added.
He alleged that Russia’s regular army was supposed to protect the flanks as Wagner troops pushed forward but is “barely holding on to them,” deploying “tens and rarely hundreds” of troops.
“Wagner ran out of resources to advance in early April, but we’re advancing despite the fact that the enemy’s resources outnumber ours fivefold because of the lack of ammunition, our losses are growing exponentially every day.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin
The Wagner Group has spearheaded the struggle for control of Bakhmut. The more than eight months of fighting there is believed to have cost thousands of lives.
It is not the first time that Prigozhin has raged about ammunition shortages and blamed Russia’s military, with which he has long been in conflict. He has already threatened to withdraw from Bakhmut once, in an interview with a Russian military blogger last week, if the situation with ammunition doesn’t improve.
Doomed To A Senseless Death
Prigozhin pronounced that Wagner will be forced to pull out of Bakhmut on May 10, 2023, and have Russia’s regular army take over, “because without ammunition, (Wagner fighters) are doomed to a senseless death.” He said that on May 10, they would be “obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defense ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds”.
The Wagner Boss accused “jealous military bureaucrats” of denying him ammunition. Western officials and analysts believe Russia has run low on ammunition.
US-based Military Analyst, Rob Lee argued that Wagner’s latest complaint of shortages likely reflects Russia’s defense 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 May 15, 2023, as tanks and artillery will be able to advance in dry weather, after the last spring rain.
Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, has tactical military value for Moscow, though analysts claim it will not be decisive in the war’s outcome.
The city had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center. It is now a devastated ghost town, but it has become an important symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion.
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