Smith Morgan
In a dispute over ammunition, the leader of the Russian Wagner Group has threatened to pull his troops out of Bakhmut, Ukraine, by Wednesday. He made this declaration after asking defense officials for more supplies in a grisly video that showed him walking among the bodies of dead fighters.
Despite the city’s dubious strategic importance, Russia has been trying to seize it for months.
Yevgeny Prigozhin attributed his choice entirely to the defense ministry. Prigozhin’s ire frequently centers on Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Publicity-seeking Prigozhin’s influence has appeared to be dwindling lately. He has previously made threats that he hasn’t kept, and he has since dismissed them as jokes and military satire.
Only last week, he admitted to a Russian war blogger that the Wagner fighters in Bakhmut were on the verge of running out of ammunition and required thousands of rounds.
Russian Wagner Group
He issued the following warning: If shortages were not addressed, his mercenaries would be forced to either retreat or remain and perish.
Thought to have resulted in thousands of deaths, the battle for Bakhmut lasted for months. Wagner soldiers and regular Russian forces engaged in joint combat with the Ukrainian military.
In an apparent effort to concentrate Russian military resources on one location of relatively little significance, Ukraine decided to defend the city at all costs.
For Russia to be able to celebrate Victory Day on Tuesday, Prigozhin said his forces had agreed to remain in Bakhmut until May 10.
He again posted a picture of his dead soldiers in February, this time blaming the army generals.
Although the military later denied purposefully depriving his Wagner group of shells, they did react at the time by boosting supplies to the front line.
Military analyst Rob Lee, who is based in the US, claims that Wagner’s most recent complaint of a shortage is most likely the result of Russia’s defense ministry restricting ammunition in advance of Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive.
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The ministry must defend the entire front, but according to Prigozhin, taking Bakhmut is his only priority.
After the final spring rain, tanks and artillery will be able to advance in dry weather, and Prigozhin himself predicted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will start by May 15.
Separately, Prigozhin seems to have appointed a former army general to the position of head of logistics.
Because of his involvement in last year’s bombardment of Mariupol, a port city in southern Ukraine that Russian forces had previously taken control of, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev has earned the moniker “The Butcher of Mariupol.”.
He appeared in online videos visiting positions in Bakhmut after attending a Wagner training camp.
Prior to this, Prigozhin claimed to have offered the general the position of deputy to a Wagner commander, noting that the general had done his best to assist in supplying mercenaries with ammunition and to support their efforts to enlist convicted criminals.
Col-Gen Mizintsev was only appointed in charge of army logistics in September of last year, shortly after Prigozhin was caught on camera inside a Russian jail promising inmates their freedom if they served with his troops in Ukraine.
