- Aoife Walsh
- BBC News
Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks in Bakhmut in a video clip released on March 3.
The commander of the Russian special Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that his forces are not getting the sufficient ammunition they need to fight on the Bakhmut front, at a time when Russian forces are seeking to control the city.
Russian forces, backed by the “Wagner” group, continue their attempt to control the city of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, but Prigozhin complained about the lack of ammunition, saying that it may be normal bureaucratic procedures, or treason.
Relations between Wagner and Moscow seem increasingly tense.
Prigozhin added in a statement on Sunday that the documents that were signed on February 22 were to supply the group’s fighters with ammunition the next day, saying that most of them had not been shipped, before indicating that this might be intentional.
In a video posted on Saturday, apparently recorded last month, Prigozhin said his forces were worried about being made a possible “scapegoat” if Russia lost its war in Ukraine.
He said: “If we withdraw, we will go down in history forever as people who took a major step towards losing the war, and this is precisely the struggle in the lack of weapons, and this is not my opinion, but the opinion of the fighting soldiers.”
Prigozhin wonders: “What if the Russian authorities wanted to deceive us, and for this reason they did not provide us with ammunition and weapons, and did not allow us to fill the shortage of our needs in personnel, including prisoners.
In a video clip, Prigozhin said on Saturday that the Russian battle front line would collapse without his forces, explaining that if Wagner’s forces withdraw from Bakhmut, the entire front will collapse, while Wagner is strengthening it.
He added, “On the one hand, we are carrying out the task of destroying the Ukrainian army, and not giving it the opportunity to focus on the defense line at the front.”
“On the other hand, we are moving forward, while the others – a clear reference to the Russian army – are somehow forced to follow us in order to save face,” he continued.
Last month, Prigozhin accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov of withholding ammunition supplies to his forces.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Monday that Ukrainian forces are likely conducting a limited fighting withdrawal in eastern Bakhmut, adding that Ukraine continues to inflict “significant losses” on Russian forces.
The Institute for the Study of War stated that the Russian army relied on the Wagner Group in efforts that lasted for months to seize Bakhmut, and since then it has provided support to Wagner’s forces in Bakhmut with ground and airborne elements.
The deputy mayor of Bakhmut, Oleksandr Marchenko, told the BBC on Saturday that street fighting was taking place between the Russian and Ukrainian forces, noting that the Russian forces had not yet controlled the entire city.
“They have no goal to save the city, their only goal is to kill people and the genocide of the Ukrainian people,” Marchenko told the Today program.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military officials said that the commanders of the Russian 155th Brigade, which is fighting near the town of Vohlidar, south of Bakhmut, refuse to carry out the attack orders after suffering heavy losses.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had bombed a command post of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment in the Zaporizhia region of southeastern Ukraine.
On the other hand, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the occupied city of Mariupol during a trip to eastern Ukraine – a year after his forces surrounded the city.
The Defense Ministry stated that Shoigu was inspecting infrastructure construction projects in Donbass, words that are sure to upset Ukraine, given the responsibility of Russian forces for the destruction of the city.