Yevgeny Prigozhin accuses ammunition shortage for deaths

• Yevgeny Prigozhin has accused the chief of staff and defense minister.
• Of trying to kill his Wagner mercenaries by denying them ammunition.
• Prigozhin accused Gerasimov and Shoigu of treason.

Yevgeny Prigozhin uploaded a picture of one of his dead soldiers in Ukraine, blaming the army generals for their deaths and appealing to regular Russians for assistance.

Prigozhin already went on the offensive on Tuesday, accusing the chief of staff and the defense minister of trying to kill his Wagner mercenaries by denying them ammunition.

The siege of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine has included Wagnerites to a significant degree.

The claims were refuted by the defense ministry.

“All statements allegedly made by assault units on shell shortages are absolutely untrue,” it said, without naming either Prigozhin or the Wagner group.

The ministry listed 1,660 rockets, 10,171 mortar rounds and artillery rounds, and 980 tank rounds that had been given between Saturday, February 18, and the following Monday, describing the arming of mercenary organizations as a priority.

As the war in Ukraine has sparked an even more acrimonious rivalry between the mercenaries and the regular army, observers believe that Prigozhin, who established Wagner, no longer has the ear of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While it is alleged that organizations like Wagner are banned in Russia, Prigozhin has not only registered it as a business but was also caught on camera last year openly recruiting for the conflict from Russian prisoners.

Wagner declared victory in the eastern town of Soledar last month, but the defense ministry later claimed control of the area.

As it has been ongoing for more than six months, the battle for Bakhmut has taken centre stage in Russia’s eastern offensive. Thousands of lives are thought to have been lost during the campaign.

Never one to hold back, Prigozhin stated that Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, and Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense, not only stopped ammunition from being provided, but also failed to assist with air transport or even provide shovels for trench digging.

He claimed that such overt military opposition to arming his men amounted to treason.

When the ministry denied his allegations, he hit back describing its statement as “spitting” at Wagner, complaining it had not received 80% of the ammunition requested to carry out its combat missions.

He then posted a picture, apparently from the Bakhmut area, of the corpses of dozens of mercenaries killed in battle lying on the frozen ground awaiting collection.

“These are the guys who died yesterday because of so-called ‘shell shortages’. There are five times more of them than there should have been,” he said in an audio message to his press service.

He called on Russians to demand publicly, but without resorting to demonstrations, that the defense ministry give ammunition to his troops.

The raw power struggle at the heart of Russia’s war in Ukraine has prompted commentators to speculate whether Prigozhin is being squeezed out by Gen Gerasimov, who was recently put in charge of the campaign.

Pro-Kremlin pundit Sergei Markov said Russians who backed the war were clearly backing Prigozhin and the squabble would undermine the defense ministry’s authority.

If ammunition was being withheld, along with the rotation of Wagner soldiers away from Bakhmut, according to Russia analyst Mark Galeotti, “it lays [the] setting for regulars to deliver Putin his first victory (however meaningless) for some time.”

“We will not leave Bakhmut,” vowed Prigozhin in his audio message. “We’ll simply die in double the numbers until all [the Wagnerites] are finished. And when the Wagnerites are completely finished, most likely Shoigu and Gerasimov will have to pick up machine guns.”

Also Read

Wagner chief Prigozhin defends killing footage

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a supporter of Putin, referred to the unconfirmed video as...