The head of Russia’s leading mercenary group Wagner on Wednesday drew renewed attention to the growing divisions between Russia’s troops and its hired soldiers after accusing Moscow’s defense chiefs of “treason”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has drawn increasing attention to cracks in Russia’s war strategy in Ukraine, and in his recent public outcry accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov of ordering the ministry not to distribute weapons to Wagner forces.
Prigozhin’s press office posted a picture of dozens of dead Wagner soldiers on its Telegram channel on Wednesday morning, asking where their ammunition was and claiming that there would have been “five times fewer” deaths had they been properly armed.
Ukrainian soldiers dig a trench near Bakhmut on February 1, 2023. (Yasuhoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)
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Russian and Ukrainian forces have been heavily engaged in brutal ground fighting in eastern Ukraine around Donetsk’s Bakhmut sector, and despite months of grappling with men, Moscow has made few gains.
In a highly charged video released Tuesday, Prigozhin spoke out and said the Defense Ministry’s “direct resistance” was “nothing more than an attempt to destroy Wagner.”
“This is comparable to high treason, especially at the moment when Wagner is fighting for Bakhmut and is losing hundreds of his fighters every day,” he said.
Fox News Digital has not been able to independently verify Prigozhin’s claims, despite the fact that Western defense officials have been signaling for months that Russia is running low on ammunition.
Since the beginning of the war, Russia has been unable to adequately train or supply its troops at the front lines, and after the Russian military suffered significant casualties in the early months of the war, Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, admitted himself to contact the Russian penitentiary system for recruitment.
Penal conscripts have since ceased, and since last month reports have suggested that the Russian Defense Ministry would push back on Prigozhin’s influence after he claimed his soldiers, not the Russian military, captured the town of Soledar, just 10 miles north of Bakhmut.
A man lays flowers on the coffin of Dmitry Menshikov, a Wagner Group mercenary killed fighting in Ukraine, in the Alley of Heroes at a cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia, December 24, 2022. (Portal/ Igor Russak )
It is unclear how many Wagner troops have died since punitive recruitment began last summer, as these figures are not generally reported alongside official military deaths.
The British Ministry of Defense earlier this month estimated that more than 800 Russian soldiers are killed every day and that up to 5,000 Russian soldiers died in a single battle over the town of Vuhledar during a particularly brutal battle in January in southern Donetsk.
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The Russian Defense Ministry has denied Prigozhin’s recent “excited statements” about withholding weapons and said there have been supply chain raids for “assault squads”.
“Attempts to create a schism in the tight-knit machinery of cooperation and support between branches of the Russian Armed Forces are counterproductive and only benefit the enemy,” the ministry added.
Prigozhin’s latest accusation may indicate that Russia has experienced a significant drop in ammunition stockpiles, although a Russia expert warned against taking the Wagner boss “at face value”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group, attends the funeral of Dmitry Menshikov at a cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, December 24, 2022. (AP Photo)
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“While Russia is definitely spending large amounts of military hardware in this conflict, I don’t interpret its tirades as a sign of a shortage of weapons,” Russian expert and former intelligence officer on Russian doctrine and strategy Rebekah Koffler told Fox News Digital. “[Prigozhin] has its own ambitions for power and reasons for attempting to stage and demonize regular Russian military officials.
“The Russian offensive will not be a ‘Blitzkrieg’ but a calibrated series of waves that has already begun,” she added. “We hoped for a while that Russia would run out of guns and try to bleed them dry, but that hasn’t happened yet.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.