KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The owner of Russia’s Wagner military contractor threatened Friday to withdraw his troops next week from the protracted battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, accusing Moscow’s military command of starving his forces of ammunition.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy entrepreneur with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that Wagner had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9, Russia’s major Victory Day holiday celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany. But he said they were undersupplied and suffering heavy losses, and would hand over operations to Russia’s regular army on May 10.
It is not the first time Prigozhin has raged about ammunition shortages and blamed Russia’s military, with which he has long been in conflict. Known for his bluster, he has previously made unverifiable claims and threats he hasn’t carried out.
Prigozhin’s spokespeople also published a video of him Friday standing in front of about 30 uniformed bodies lying on the ground and saying they are Wagner fighters who died on Thursday alone. He angrily demands ammunition from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov.
“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin says, pointing at the bodies and swearing. “The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”
Wagner has spearheaded the struggle for control of Bakhmut, the longest - and likely bloodiest - battle of the war. More than eight months of fighting there is believed to have cost thousands of lives. A pullout by Wagner would be a huge blow to the Russian campaign.
For the Ukrainian side, Bakhmut has become an important symbol of resistance to Russia’s invasion. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says its loss could begin building international support for a deal that could require Ukraine to make unacceptable compromises.
At the end of last year, the U.S. estimated Wagner had about 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 of the convicts the company enlisted, making it a small portion of Russian fighting forces. John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council at the White House, said earlier this week the U.S. estimates that half of the 20,000 Russian troops killed in Ukraine since December were Wagner fighters in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin’s spat with the Russian military leadership dates back to Wagner’s creation less than 10 years ago. During the war in Ukraine, he has chastised Russia’s top military officials, publicly accusing them of incompetence - behavior that is highly unusual in Russia’s tightly controlled political system.
One general whom Prigozhin actively criticized was fired, but other top officials he has lashed out at appear to have retained the Kremlin’s trust. In January, Putin put Gerasimov in charge of the Russian forces in Ukraine, a move some observers also interpreted as an attempt to cut Prigozhin down to size.
Prigozhin alleged Friday 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.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not immediately comment on the claims, and it was not possible to independently verify them.
“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’s statement said. “Because of the lack of ammunition, our losses are growing exponentially every day.”
Ukrainian officials were skeptical about Prigozhin’s claims of ammunition shortages. Ukraine’s military intelligence representative, Andrii Cherniak, told The Associated Press that Wagner’s forces had clearly failed in their goal of taking Bakhmut by May 9 and Prigozhin had made the statement to “justify their unsuccessful actions.”
Hanna Maliar, the deputy head of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said Friday that Ukrainian artillery had destroyed some Wagner ammunition depots.
Prigozhin has toured Russian prisons to recruit fighters, promising inmates pardons if they survive a half-year tour of front-line duty with Wagner. Western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner mercenaries of committing numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.
Bakhmut, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, has tactical military value for Moscow, though analysts say it won’t 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 ghost town.
Western officials and analysts believe Russia has run low on ammunition as the 14-month conflict became bogged down in a war of attrition over the winter, with both sides resorting to long-range bombardments.
Prigozhin has already threatened to withdraw from Bakhmut once before, in an interview with a Russian military blogger last week.
Asked by The AP about Prigozhin’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during his daily conference call with reporters that he had seen media reports, but would not comment further.
Also Friday, an oil refinery in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, which borders the annexed Crimean Peninsula, briefly caught fire after it was attacked by a drone, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials. The fire was small and was quickly put out, the report said.
It was the second straight day that the Ilyinsky refinery had came under a drone attack. Drone attacks on oil facilities in Russian regions on the border with Ukraine have been reported almost daily over the past week.
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