The Wagner chief indicated that his men have still not received the ammunition promised by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
He head of the Russian Wagner mercenary company, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, warned that if his troops withdraw from Bajmut, city in eastern Ukraine, “the entire front will collapse.”
“If the Wagner private military company withdraws from Bakhmut, the entire front will collapse,” Prigozhin said in a video posted on YouTube, adding that the collapse could reach “as far as the borders of Russia and, perhaps, beyond.”
He added that the Wagners, on the one hand, “attract the entire Ukrainian Army and do not allow it to concentrate on other sectors of the front.”
“And, on the other hand, we advance and the others (the military) are forced to follow us so as not to be left behind,” said Prigozhin, considered close to the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Wagner chief indicated that his men have still not received the ammunition promised by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“Regarding the ammunition: on the afternoon of February 22, the documents were signed, on February 23 the shipping orders were issued, but until today a large part of the ammunition has not been shipped,” he said in a statement. comment posted last night on Telegram.
Prigozhin indicated that he is trying to find out the cause of this delay, whether it is “simple bureaucracy or betrayal.”
The Wagners, in whose ranks thousands of inmates fight, are the main assault force attacking Bakhmut, an important communications hub, linked by roads to the Kramatorsk y Sloviansk, the largest cities in the Donetsk region controlled by Ukrainian forces.
The President of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelenski, He has declared that his forces will defend Bakhmut “as long as it is reasonable”, so it is not ruled out that the Ukrainian troops will abandon the city, where some 4,500 of the 70,000 inhabitants that it had before the outbreak of the conflict remain.