"Where's the ammunition?"
.
The head of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin denounces in a video the severe shortage of ammunition his militia suffers from, and accuses the Russian military leaders of the deaths of his mercenaries on the battlefield.
In the video on the Telegram channel of his press service, reports Ukrainska Pravda, Prigozhin declares that he suffers "a 70% shortage of ammunition", and rails against the leadership of the regular Russian army, accusing the Chief of Staff of the armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of the deaths of his men.
In the video, Wagner's boss,
standing over the bodies of dozens of what he claims are his fighters killed
in Russia's war with Ukraine, issues an expletive-laden challenge to Russia's military leadership.
"Shoigu, Gerasimov, where is the ammunition?"
says Prigozhin, calling the Russian defense minister and the head of the Russian armed forces.
"The blood is still fresh," he accuses, pointing to the bodies behind him.
"They came here as volunteers and they're dying so you can sit like fat cats in your fancy offices."
On May 10, one day after the anniversary of the victory over Nazism, Wagner will withdraw from Bakhmut, handing over her positions to the Russian army, Prigozhin announced.
But
Kiev
does not believe it and believes that Progozhin's words only serve
to absolve themselves of responsibility for the failure.
Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Chernyak says no troop withdrawals were recorded on the ground.
The accusations of the head of Wagner
Prigozhin released this latest statement just a few hours after posting a video on his Telegram channels in which he showed dozens of corpses of Wagner fighters lying on the ground and lashed out with heavy insults against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Now the founder of Wagner is again addressing Shoigu and Gerasimov stating: "I officially announce that
my guys will not bear losses in Bakhmut without ammunition
. Therefore, from May 10, we leave the city. We still have only two kilometers left, but if you don't want to give the Russians a victory by conquering Bakhmut, those are your problems."
"Prigozhin's words do not reveal a hunger for grenades but an intention to decline responsibility for the failures", continues Kiev.
"These statements have been made in view of the fact that
he cannot fulfill his promise to capture the city before May 9.
"
And he goes on to underline how the Wagner group certainly has supply and ammunition problems, but that these will never be enough for them: "The more they are given, the more they need it and the more they want to receive", he observed.
In his speech Prigozhin then chronicled Wagner's actions in the conflict
.
On March 16, 2022, he writes, "when the special military operation did not go according to plan", the military leaders asked for the help of the private company, which three days later brought its first units back from Africa.
At the end of last summer, after the Russians withdrew from the Kharkiv region, the Wagner militiamen occupied a front line over 130 kilometers long.
Then, Prigozhin continues, on October 8 they launched the 'Bakhmut meat grinder' operation with the aim of "attracting the Ukrainian forces to themselves and thus giving the army a break" from Moscow.
However, Prigozhin continues, a month ago the Wagnerians stopped receiving ammunition and this became an obstacle for Bakhmut to take over,
which the founder of the company had planned for May 9th.
Now Prigozhin says that, just out of respect for the anniversary of the victory, Wagner will still stay in Bakhmut until May 10.
"Then - he adds - we will go to our back camps and there we will wait until the Russian people need us again".
CNN reports, quoting a Russian blogger, that
former Russian Deputy Defense Minister Mikhail Mizintsev has allegedly joined the Wagner mercenary group as deputy commander.
CNN quotes Russian blogger Alexander Simonov, who posted two Telegram videos showing Mizintsev wearing a Wagner-branded uniform and apparently out and about in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Russia's defense ministry announced on Sunday that it had replaced Mizintsev, who was Russia's deputy defense minister for logistics.
The general, nicknamed 'the butcher of Mariupol', had been in the role since September 2022.
