The announced withdrawal of Wagner Group fighters from the city of Bakhmut is another setback for Russia at a crucial moment in its war in Ukraine, and reveals a huge rift between the leaders of the effort just as Kiev prepares for a counteroffensive.
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Telegram on Friday that his mercenary company would leave the city in the eastern Donetsk region on May 10 after accusing the Russian Defense Ministry of depriving its fighters of ammunition and generally in to fail the war effort.
In a separate video released Thursday night, Prigozhin filmed dead Wagner fighters and berated Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, who oversees the Ukraine war for Moscow.
“You think that you are the masters of life, and you think that you also have the right to master their lives,” Prigozhin said, pointing to the dead soldiers behind him. “If you give us the normal ammo, there are five times less corpses here.”
The allegations underscore a growing internal rift between Moscow and a key ally in the Ukraine war. Prigozhin has also warned that should he withdraw, the front line in Bakhmut would collapse.
Matthew Hoh, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy who has served with the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Russian forces can fill any gaps left by Wagner Group forces.
But he said Prigozhin was “basically screaming mutiny” ahead of Victory Day, a major holiday honoring Moscow’s triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to speak during the celebrations in Moscow next week.
“It’s not something that Putin or his people want to deal with,” Hoh said. “The perception is that things are getting out of control.”
The chaos that Prigozhin unleashed among the Russian military also tells a disturbing story of the war before Ukraine’s counteroffensive, said Anna Arutunyan, a fellow at the Wilson Center.
“It was a very emotional tirade, a very emotional message — he hasn’t yelled at her that directly in the past,” she said. “Prigozhin is fed up. He’s fed up and I think it reflects the feeling that other people are fed up with it.”
“Bodies are piling up. There is not enough ammunition to go around while Russia prepares for a counteroffensive by Ukraine,” she added. “There’s a deep feeling of like this [counteroffensive] will spread.”
Arutunyan, who has written a new book on Russia’s hybrid war in Ukraine, said Prigozhin is likely to engage in “emotional blackmail” to get concessions from Moscow. She added that the leader of the mercenaries could change course if he gets what he wants.
“What we’ve seen in the past is him doing these public attacks and then backing down and saying, ‘Yeah, they’re giving us more ammo,'” she said. “So it’s about how the Kremlin refines this and what signals it wants to send.”
The Kremlin has so far not publicly commented on Prigozhin’s allegations and planned withdrawal.
But Russia’s state media outlet TASS published a brief article on Friday quoting a Defense Ministry spokesman who said the attack on Bakhmut was progressing.
The Wagner Group, known for its interference in conflicts in Africa and Syria, has played a crucial role in the Ukraine war since it deployed fighters to the country in March last year.
Mercenaries helped capture the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the East Luhansk region last spring. And Russian forces, led by the Wagner Group, began a full-scale attack on Bakhmut in October. The city in the Donetsk region is a strategic point for Russian forces to push further west and seize eastern Donbass, the core of Moscow’s offensive launched in the winter.
The Wagner Group scored a small victory in January when they took the nearby town of Soledar, allowing forces to invade Bakhmut from a different direction. But they’ve only made incremental profits since then, at a huge cost in ammunition and soldiers, including thousands of soldiers recruited from prisons.
The White House estimates that Russia has lost nearly 20,000 troops since December, with nearly half of those killed coming from the Wagner Group.
But the Wagner Group also severely damaged elite Ukrainian units while Russian forces deployed limited military personnel, said Hoh, an expert at the Center for International Policy.
“Wagner was very helpful to the Russian army because by using the prisoners, the Wagner mercenary troops are more likely to fight than your regular forces,” he said.
Prigozhin has been complaining about an alleged lack of ammunition for months. Earlier this year he sent a representative to Russia’s military headquarters in Ukraine to ask for more supplies, which he was apparently denied.
Russia has been suffering from ammunition shortages for several months, but still has significantly more resources and firepower than Ukraine, which is facing supply problems of its own.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, also said the Wagner Group “had a significant artillery advantage at Bakhmut and received preferential support” from Russian military leaders.
“This is likely a reflection of the Defense Ministry’s ammunition rationing prior to Ukraine’s counteroffensive.” he tweeted, commented on the video of Prigozhin from Thursday. “The Ministry of Defense has to defend the entire front, but Prigozhin only cares about taking over Bakhmut.”
Russian military bloggers also said that the problem of lack of ammunition and heavy casualties was not limited to the Wagner group.
Blogger Igor Girkin wrote on Telegram that “our entire active army” is “acutely low on ammunition” and asked who would be left if everyone facing the problem left the front lines.
Prigozhin on Friday said he was pulling his fighters back to “lick our wounds” but would still bring victory to the Russian people.
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Ukrainian officials have yet to comment publicly on Prigozhin’s tirades, who are prone to outbursts on social media and have long attracted media attention.
Lera Burlakova, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said Prigozhin’s announced withdrawal could be a ploy to trick Ukrainians.
“It is very common for Prigozhin to make any hysterical statements,” she said. “I really don’t think any military in Russia is powerful enough to just make their own decisions… without some very serious consequences.”
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