Tensions are palpable in the Kremlin. The head of Russia’s paramilitary group Wagner on Tuesday accused his country’s general staff and defense minister of “treason” because they said they refused to supply equipment to his mercenaries on the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
These statements by businessman Evguéni Prigojine mark an escalation in tensions between his group and the Russian army, which competes on the ground in Ukraine. Tensions have become increasingly apparent in recent weeks as Russian forces attempt to capture the town of Bakhmout, with the army and Wagner each claiming advances and sometimes contradicting one another.
“An Attempt to Destroy Wagner”
“The Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of Defense are issuing orders at all costs asking not only not to give the Wagner paramilitary group ammunition, but also not to help it with air transport,” Yevgeny Prigoyine ranted in a voice recording released by his press service on Telegram. “There is a frontal opposition that is nothing less than an attempt to destroy Wagner. It can be compared to a betrayal of the fatherland when Wagner fights for Bakhmout and suffers hundreds of casualties every day.”
While Yevgeny Prigozhin has repeatedly criticized the Russian high command in the past, this ad hominem attack on Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, two of Vladimir Putin’s most important power figures, is clearly an escalation.
Russia’s Defense Ministry responded in the evening with a statement detailing the number of munitions supplied for “volunteer assault squadrons,” as the military seem to call Wagner’s men. “All requests for ammunition for the attack units will be fulfilled as soon as possible,” the ministry assured, promising new deliveries from Saturday and denouncing the shortage reports in this area as “absolutely wrong”.
The ministry once again hailed the “courage” and “denial” of Russian “volunteers” in combat and denounced the “attempts at partition” as “counterproductive and only playing in the enemy’s favour.”
Flashbacks shortly before the anniversary of the beginning of the war
These tensions also highlight the difficulties that Russian forces encountered three days before the anniversary of the start of the offensive that was soon to end with the capture of Kiev and is now deadlocked. Wagner, who has recruited thousands of prisoners to fight in Ukraine, has been leading the assault on Bakhmout since the summer and recently captured a number of nearby settlements to encircle the town. On Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigoyine accused the high command of even forbidding Wagner’s fighters to supply “shovels for digging trenches.”