Wagner's forces will leave the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut next week, an enclave they have been trying to take since last summer. Evgeny Prigozhin, head of the country's largest mercenary army, made the announcement after broadcasting a video showing his dead soldiers and insulting the Russian defense minister and chief of staff. Prigozhin communicated that they would leave on May 10 due to heavy losses and a poor ammunition supply.
"We are forced to transfer positions in the Bakhmut settlement to units of the Ministry of Defense and withdraw to logistic camps to lick our wounds," Prigozhin said in a dramatic statement: "I am going to remove Wagner's units from Bakhmut because, with lack of ammunition, they are doomed to die senseless".
Prigozhin has often issued impulsive statements in the past and then backtracked. This time he announces a withdrawal that he had threatened on more than one occasion. Hours before the announcement of his withdrawal, the Wagner leader complained about the lack of ammunition and lashed out at the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valeri Gerasimov. . "These are the boys who died today, the blood is still fresh," Prigozhin said in a video recorded at night and posted on Telegram. The footage shows rows of corpses of Wagner fighters lying on the ground.
The head of the mercenaries assures that the casualties would be less if the Wagner units received the proper amount of ammunition. "Listen to me, bastards. They were someone's parents and children. That garbage that does not give us ammunition will have breakfast in hell!", says Wagner's boss, who accuses Shoigu and Gerasimov of "being in expensive clubs" while their children " enjoy life, making videos for YouTube". “They think they own life and have the right to get rid of these lives!” he adds, yelling into the camera from close range.
It is not Wagner's first broadside against the Russian military command. Prigozhin himself, who has been at the center of numerous tensions with the Russian government in the framework of the offensive, already warned him in the video released in recent hours: "If we cannot resolve this ammunition deficit, we will have to withdraw or die so as not to finish running away like rats at the end".
Prigozhin is often defiant, vying for the Kremlin's favor against other 'leaders' of the offensive. But this is the first time that he has attacked the military leadership so much on a personal level. "If we were given enough ammunition, there would be five times less casualties. They volunteered and are dying here so that you can fatten in your mahogany offices," he has riveted.
The press secretary of the President of Russia, Dimitri Peskov, avoided commenting on the statement by the founder of the Wagner group, hiding behind the fact that it is the development of the "special military operation", as Russia calls its invasion of Ukraine. "Yes, of course, we saw it in the media, but I cannot comment on it because it is about the course of the special military operation," Peskov replied when asked if the Kremlin was aware of Prigozhin's decision to withdraw forces on May 10.
Wagner recruits and fights with relative autonomy but the ammunition comes from a flow that is common to the regular army and that of the mercenaries. This mercenary corps has suffered heavy casualties, but has played an important role for the Russian government in its task of killing as many Ukrainian soldiers as possible in order to break the resistance and advance on the country in the future. With its push, the Ukrainian defense has been losing mainly soldiers, but also territory until it has entrenched itself in a small portion in the west of the city.
The annihilation of the Ukraine has been paid for with Russians attracted by Wagner's money. Thus Putin has 'spent' mercenaries in exchange for Ukraine losing soldiers. The withdrawal of the Wagner group mercenaries from the area could compromise the strength of the Russian front in that area of Donetsk, but also mark a new phase in the invasion.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
