On the eve of Ukraine’s expected counterattack in the war, a dangerous debate has flared up in the ranks of the Russian armed forces: whether the battles will be lost due to the mistakes of the commanders themselves. The head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, took the Kremlin to the extreme by announcing this Friday that its troops will abandon their positions in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine on May 10 due to lack of security. combat ammunition. Prigozhin blames Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu directly for this lack of supplies and accuses him of boycotting Wagner’s capture of that city because of his personal quarrels. The chosen date could not be worse for Vladimir Putin. The Russian President and Commander-in-Chief will have no major conquest to report on Victory Day over Nazi Germany – May 9 – a date marked red for the President because of its symbolism. Additionally, he will lead the parade amid two threats that went unnoticed a year ago: that of drones in the Russian skies and that of disunity among his frontline ranks.
“I am withdrawing Wagner’s units from Bakhmut because they are doomed to a senseless death without ammunition,” Prigozhin announced, surrounded by his loyal soldiers, in a message to the president, the high command and the Russian people. “We should have captured Bakhmut by May 9, but knowing this, the pseudo-military bureaucrats have blocked our access to artillery ammunition since May 1,” he denounced. The businessman stressed that of the 45 square kilometers through which the city stretches, he barely had to conquer 2.5 square kilometers.
The leader of Wagner, a multi-front vanguard in eastern Ukraine, assures that its members receive barely 10% of the projectiles they demand to sustain the advance in this eastern Ukraine city that has become a symbol of resistance to Russian troops has become. while their victims “grow exponentially every day”. “Bearing the losses without having ammunition in Bakhmut is useless and unjustified, my people will not do it,” Prigozhin warned.
The St. Petersburg tycoon, a non-military businessman, gained notoriety during the war for the frankness of his public interventions and for showing the harshness of the fighting that official Russian propaganda conceals. Unlike Wagner’s owner, the defense minister belongs to Putin’s exclusive inner circle. In fact, thanks to his tremendous popularity as Minister of Emergencies in the 1990s, he was one of the main supporters of the president’s rise to power.
surrounded by corpses
The resignation announcement came hours after Wagner’s boss released another recording in which he completely pissed off the defense minister. The businessman walked through a field full of bloody corpses of his soldiers at night, to which he pointed as he walked towards the camera to amid insults and shouting at the high command of his death. “These, shit, are someone’s friggin’ parents and kids. And those scum that don’t give us the ammo, damn bitch! they’re going to eat her remains in hell. Crap. fags. We have a 70% ammo shortage. Shoigu, Gerasimov [Valeri, jefe del Estado Mayor ruso]Where the hell is the ammo?” Prigozhin shouted.
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In a society forced to fight at the front, the Wagner owner aimed his arrows at the weakest point of the generals. “You sit in expensive clubs, your kids stumble through life recording videos on YouTube. You believe that you are the owner of this life and that you have the right to dispose of her life,” Prigozhin shouted in the video, focusing on Russians’ criticism of their elite. For example, the Defense Minister’s daughter, Ksenia Shoigu, and her husband, influencer Alexei Stolyarov, were tracked down by independent media outlet Sota at the Caesar’s Palace hotel in Dubai on New Year’s Eve.
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Moreover, in another video released later by Prigozhin’s communications bureau, the businessman directly threatened Shoigu and Gerasimov: “You are responsible to the mothers and children for tens of thousands of dead and injured for not supplying ammunition, and I will hold them responsible .”
The resignation of Wagner, a private military contractor who is tolerated in a country that has a law punishing the establishment of mercenary companies with prison, puts the Kremlin in another difficult position, because it could face another crime if its task of the war front is rejected becomes supreme command. Vladimir Putin not only signed the forced mobilization of at least 300,000 Russians in September; That same month, it also passed an amendment to the law making voluntary surrender, refusal to fight and desertion punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The purpose of this measure was that his forces would not collapse, having been reinforced with volunteers, prisoners and mobilized civilians due to the heavy casualties of professional soldiers early in the invasion.
five to one
According to Prigozhin, by early April Wagner was running out of resources to sustain his offensive and at the front he was outnumbered by Ukrainian forces five to one. For this reason, the owner of the mercenary company has asked the Chief of the General Staff and sole commander of the Ukrainian campaign Gerasimov to issue an order to replace his troops with regular units of the Ministry of Defense before the end of his term, according to an ultimatum. Putin settled a dispute between Wagner and the ministry back in March by making it clear that the government was forced to ration ammunition after more than a year of war. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Prigozhin’s allegations against the high command this Friday.
Wagner’s long offensive in the city has raised doubts among some Russian military experts. “One gets the impression that this nine-month attack is a public relations matter for Mr. Prigozhin,” former officer and former deputy Viktor Alksnis, known in Russia as The Black Colonel, wrote on Telegram. According to the military, neither does Bakhmut have any strategic sense, nor would Putin have given the order to take it to Victory Day. Also, in his opinion, the Russians should have imitated the Ukrainian strategy: “If an attack on enemy positions in a certain sector causes heavy casualties, then it is necessary to attack the enemy in another sector and feel the weaknesses of his defense. “
US intelligence put the casualties suffered by the Russian military since December at around 100,000, including around 20,000 dead. According to his calculations, around half of the losses can be attributed to the Wagner mercenary company, which after six months of service recruited thousands of prisoners against the promise of pardon.
However, Prigozhin adds support to his cause, including that of the governors of the border regions with the war, as well as the high commands of the Ministry of Defense. General Mikhail Mizintsev, who was fired last week just eight months after being promoted to head of Russia’s logistics, has joined Wagner’s ranks as deputy commander. Known as the butcher of Mariupol for violently taking over this key city in southern Ukraine, Mizintsev’s signing is a coup for Prigozhin, thanks to the military’s reputation with its own and pro-war Russian factions.
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