The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Evgeny Prigozhin, said Sunday that he has been promised as many ammunition and weapons as necessary to continue his assault on the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which the Russians have been trying to occupy since the beginning. last summer.
Prigozhin’s announcement comes two days after he proclaimed his plans to withdraw from Bakhmut, complaining that his men had run out of ammunition and suffered “useless and unjustified” losses. The head of the mercenaries denounced that the “bureaucrats” had withheld supplies despite knowing that Wagner’s date to capture the city was May 9, the day of commemoration of the Soviet victory in World War II.
“Overnight they have promised us as much ammunition and weapons as we need to continue operations. They have promised us that everything necessary to prevent the enemy from cutting off [supplies] will be deployed on the flank,” he said in a statement. Telegram message.
Prigozhin has been involved in several tensions with the Russian government in the framework of the offensive. While army commanders tend to remain silent, giving prominence to the top, Wagner’s chief is often defiant, vying for the Kremlin’s favor with other managers of the offensive. Russian mercenaries and regular soldiers rely on the same ammunition supply. Prigozhin has not wanted to keep that pulse private.
To calm down Wagner’s boss, Vladimir Putin once again made one of the few generals the leader of the mercenaries respects advance on the board. Prigozhin himself announced with satisfaction that the Russian Defense Ministry had assigned General Sergei Surovikin to work alongside Wagner. “This is the only man with the star of an army general who knows how to fight,” he added.
Surovikin, nicknamed the ‘butcher of Syria’, commanded Russia’s campaign in Ukraine for several months before Chief of General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov was given operational command in January. Surovikin took a backseat, which was a setback for Prigozhin.
Putin launched his “special military operation” in 2022 as a ‘war of conquest’ in which various factions (army battalions, mercenaries, Chechen troops, security forces and even conscripts) moved across Ukrainian territory in different directions independently. and not completely coordinated.
After 15 months of fighting that has failed to close the breach opened in February, the divorce on the Russian front is palpable. This week Prigozhin posed surrounded by corpses he said were his men, shouting insults at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu; and the chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. He told them that they bore the responsibility for “tens of thousands of Wagner’s dead and wounded.” At his feet, the images showed rows of corpses of Wagner fighters lying on the ground.
Ukrainian troops have been forced back in recent weeks but have held on to the city to inflict as many Russian losses as possible before the breakthrough they are preparing to retake stolen territories.
Bakhmut has grown in importance because Russia sees it as a springboard to other cities in Ukraine’s Donbas region that are still outside its control. There the fight has been the most intense of the conflict. The war of attrition that is being waged there is costing Wagner dearly.
The city has become a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance, with blood at a high price on both sides. The United States estimates that Russia has suffered some 100,000 casualties since December, a figure that includes 20,000 deaths. About half of those killed came from the Wagner mercenary company.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
