The founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group announced Friday that his private army, which has been spearheading the bloody fight to capture Bakhmut, will pull out of the Ukrainian city next week — just hours after he released a grisly video showing what he claimed were corpses of his fighters as he raged about a lack of ammunition.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a catering mogul and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, could be heard in the gruesome footage hurling a string of profanities directed at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the f—ing ammunition?!” Prigozhin demands while standing in front of about 30 blood-soaked uniformed corpses lying on the ground. He says they are Wagner fighters who were killed on Thursday alone.
“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin says, pointing at the bodies. “The bastards that don’t give us ammunition will eat their f—ing guts in hell!”
Hours later, Prigozhin fired off another strongly worded video vowing to abandon Bakhmut within days.
Prigozhin said his paramilitary force planned to seize the strategically important city by May 9, when Russians celebrate victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
But instead, his soldiers, who Prigozhin said have been starved of ammunition by Russia’s military brass since May 1, will withdraw from Bakhmut the following day.
Dressed in full military gear and flanked by scores of his heavily armed fighters, Prigozhin lashed out at “military-adjacent bureaucrats,” whom he accused of thwarting Wagner’s success.
“Because they think they will go down in history as victors while shaking their fat bellies. They already went down in history as cowards,” Prigozhin says in the video.
“I officially declare to the head of the General Staff and the commander in chief: My guys will not be taking senseless and unjustified casualties in Bakhmut without ammunition,” the Wagner owner says. “Therefore, from May 10, 2023, we are leaving the settlement of Bakhmut.”
Prigozhin claimed his force has come within a little more than a mile of capturing the entire city as part of Operation “Bakhmut meat grinder.”
“But if because of your petty jealously you don’t want to gift victory of taking Bakhmut to the Russians, that is your problem,” he added.
Prigozhin went on to say that despite having virtually no ammo, his fighters will continue carrying out their duties until May 9 so as not to mar the Victory Day holiday.
Afterward, the Wagner Group will withdraw to its rear camps “to wait until we will be again needed by the people of Russia,” Prigozhin says. “I think it will happen very soon because you are incapable of managing what you’ve been assigned to do.”
In another video shared by his press service Friday, Prigozhin argued that Shoigu and Gerasimov must bear the responsibility for “tens of thousands of Wagner dead and injured.”
“I will make sure of that,” he warned.
Over the course of his mercenary group’s involvement in the war, Prigozhin has repeatedly accused Russia’s Ministry of Defense of failing to supply his soldiers with sufficient quantities of ammunition and has issued threats to quit the battlefield, which so far he has not carried out.
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,” Prigozhin said in a statement. “Because of the lack of ammunition, our losses are growing exponentially every day.”
Western officials and analysts believe Russia has run low on ammunition as the 14-month conflict descended into a war of attrition over the winter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to reporters Friday that he was aware of Prigozhin’s fiery remarks vowing to abandon Bakhmut but refused to comment on them.
The eight-month battle for Bakhmut — the bloodiest conflict of the war — has been led by the Wagner Group and is believed to have cost thousands of lives on both sides.
The Russians believe that capturing the decimated city could hold the key to bringing the rest of the industrial Donbas region under their control.
Ukrainian troops have been losing ground in Bakhmut in recent weeks but have clung on in the city to try to deplete enemy forces as much as possible ahead of Kyiv’s anticipated counteroffensive.
A senior Ukrainian official sounded skeptical about Wagner’s purported withdrawal plan, saying Russia was bringing mercenaries from along the front line to Bakhmut to try to capture the city by May 9.
“We are now seeing them pulling [fighters] from the entire offensive line where the Wagner fighters were, they are pulling [them] to the Bakhmut direction,” Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Ukrainian television.
Meanwhile, Serhii Cherevatyi, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, told CNN that if Wagner does make good on its threat to leave Bakhmut, it could mark a “turning point” in the months-long battle.
“If they don’t change their logic and don’t manage to replenish, I think this may be considered a turning point in the battle for Bakhmut. [Wagner] is the key force that fought for Bakhmut,” he said.
Cherevatyi also claimed Prigozhin was lying about the ammunition deficit and using it as an excuse to save his forces from annihilation after months of “foolish” attacks.
“There is no shell famine,” he said. “Over the last day alone, 520 rocket launcher attacks were made on our positions in the Bakhmut area, and there were six airstrikes, so this is not true.”
“I think he is looking for a reason to simply retreat from the battlefield, suffering huge losses, unable to perform any task, and unable to replenish his personnel,” Cherevatyi added.
With Post wires
