Zelenskyy and von der Leyen meet in Kiev on Europe Day
The European Union celebrates its annual Europe Day of Peace and Unity, while Ukraine looks anxiously in the background.
AP
Whether it’s just incitement to hatred or a real warning, Yevgeny Prigozhin makes a lot of noise about Russia’s position in the war with Ukraine, and in particular in the battle for Bakhmut.
The boss of the private military company Wagner has threatened in recent days to withdraw his fighters from the hard-fought eastern city. He claimed he was threatened with being branded a traitor if he did, and now he says his troops could lose Bakhmut even if they were only in Ukraine, which occupies 5% of it.
“There is a serious risk of encirclement of PMC ‘Wagner’ in Bakhmut due to flank failure. Flanks are already cracking and falling through,” Prigozhin said Wednesday in a post from his Concord company destroy the PMC “Wagner” in Ukraine.”
The once-vaunted Russian military has not won a significant battlefield victory for several months and was embarrassed by having to withdraw from Kharkiv province and the city of Kherson in the last four months of last year. A defeat in Bakhmut, where Moscow has already sacrificed thousands of lives and an immeasurable amount of equipment, would be a severe psychological blow.
Still, there is plenty of skepticism about Prigozhin’s stormy statements. The Kremlin said Wednesday it had not seen its critical video post from the previous day, and Ukrainian military spokesman Serhiy Cherevatyi said Russia was still actively trying to capture Bakhmut.
“The situation remains difficult because for the enemy, despite all the white noise that Prigozhin is trying to create, Bakhmut is (still) the main direction of attack,” Cherevatyi said on TV.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War questioned Prigozhin’s motives and said of his threat to withdraw from Bakhmut:
“Prigozhin tried to blackmail the Russian Defense Ministry into reprioritizing the Bakhmut offensive so he could independently achieve victory in the city, at the expense of the likely preparations of the Russian military ahead of the planned Ukrainian counter-offensive.”
Developments:
◾ Photojournalist Arman Soldin was killed in a rocket attack while covering Ukrainian positions in Chasiv Yar with colleagues from the Agence France press, the news agency said. AFP said it was “devastated” by Soldin’s death.
◾ Russia is considering “retaliatory measures” in response to the US refusal to issue visas to Russian journalists for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s trip to New York last month to attend UN Security Council meetings, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday.
◾ The governor of Russia’s Voronezh region on the border with Ukraine said two Ukrainian drones had attacked a military training area in his region overnight. The Russian media portal Baza reported that 14 soldiers were injured.
British officials have asked defense contractors to supply Ukraine with missiles with a range of nearly 200 miles, which would mean increased military support for Kiev.
The call for comment from companies was included in a notice issued by the International Fund for Ukraine, a multinational financing mechanism for supplying arms to Ukraine’s military. The UK Ministry of Defence, which manages the fund, has asked the companies to come forward and provide missiles that can be launched from land, sea or air. The missiles have about the same range as the Army Tactical Missile System, ATACMS, which Washington refuses to provide.
Politico reports that the Biden administration has no plans to follow Britain’s lead, “some officials say the US is now out of a bind thanks to Britain’s planned delivery.” Politico quotes several administration officials it does not name.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US had few missiles left other than an increase in weapons.
Russia plans to move more than 3,000 Ukrainian employees from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, leaving Europe’s largest nuclear facility with a “catastrophic shortage of qualified personnel,” the Ukrainian nuclear power company warned on Wednesday.
Energoatom said even the Ukrainian workers who were forced to sign “shameful” contracts are being evacuated, making the plant unsafe even though it is not operational.
“Evacuation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant as soon as possible, expelling the (Russians) and transferring control of the power plant to its legitimate Ukrainian operator Energoatom is the only way to end the Russian mess at the nuclear power plant and guarantee its future safety”, Energoatom said in a statement.
A Russian-appointed deputy prime minister of the region, Andrey Kozenko, said up to 70,000 civilians were being voluntarily expelled from the region due to the threat of artillery fire. Officials deployed by Russia are closing schools, preparing buses and appointing officials to oversee the evacuation, according to the National Center of Resistance of Ukraine.
Ukrainian authorities blame Moscow for the attacks and say Moscow’s goal is to get people deeper into Russian-controlled Ukraine and into Russia itself.
Kremlin officials have yet to watch the scathing video that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, posted to social media on Tuesday, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. Prigozhin said his troops still hadn’t received much-needed ammunition requested by the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Wagner boss said he might have to withdraw his troops because of the shortage – and was told it would be seen as treason. But Prigozhin said some Russian troops did indeed flee positions near Bakhmut, a claim later corroborated by the Ukrainian military, who claimed it was advancing in the area.
Contribution: The Associated Press