Russia’s Wagner chief threatens to pull troops out of Bakhmut

Russian paramilitary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Friday threatened to pull his frontline fighters from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine next week because of ammunition shortages, berating army chiefs in a grisly video.

Prigozhin’s Wagner group has spearheaded the grinding, months-long Russian assault on Bakhmut, almost capturing the city in the longest and bloodiest battle of the campaign.

While Prigozhin has made similar threats to pull out in the past, the emotive language used in a video statement and the scathing personal criticism of the leaders of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine were unprecedented.

“On May 10, 2023 we will have to hand over our positions in Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw Wagner units to rear camps to lick our wounds,” Prigozhin said in a written statement on Telegram.

“I will pull out Wagner units from Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they are facing a senseless death,” he said, adding that he was now expecting a plan from the military on how to implement the withdrawal.

Earlier, Prigozhin posted a video on Telegram showing rows of what he said were dead Wagner fighters in which he blamed Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov for their deaths.

“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is my fucking ammunition?” Prigozhin said in the video.

“They came here as volunteers and they are dying so you can get fat in your wood-panelled offices,” he said, standing by the bodies.

“These guys are from Wagner. They died today. Their blood is still fresh,” he said, adding that army chiefs “will go to hell”. “We have an ammunition shortage of 70 percent,” he said in his tirade, in which several expletives were bleeped out.

“You sit in your (bleeped) expensive clubs... You think you are the masters of life and you have the right to decide on their lives,” he said, pointing at the bodies.

Prigozhin is closely linked to President Vladimir Putin and the two started their careers in business and politics in their native Saint Petersburg following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In his statement on Friday, Prigozhin said his fighters had mobilised soon after the start of the campaign in Ukraine and helped Russian troops advance after a series of reversals.