Wagner mercenary company owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has increasingly irritated the Kremlin by warning that if his men leave Bakhmut, the Donbass city that has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian offensive, have to withdraw, “the entire front is lost.” This was explained on Friday in a video released this Monday, the same day that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traveled to the biggest Russian conquest of this war, the city of Mariupol. Wagner’s boss, who assures in the recording that his men will win the battle for Bakhmut, blamed Shoigu for a lack of ammunition in the past, which he attributes to the high losses in his ranks. In the video, Prigozhin denounces that this ammunition, promised two weeks earlier, “hasn’t arrived yet.” Then he wants to “investigate the reason: either ordinary bureaucracy or treason.”
Wagner’s criticism comes at a crucial moment in the offensive on Bakhmut, where Russian forces have suffered enormous casualties trying to complete their first breakthrough in more than half a year. “The ammunition documents were signed on the night of February 22nd. Orders for delivery were placed on the 23rd, but the ammunition has not yet been sent,” Prigozhin lamented in a statement issued by his company Concorde.
Russia has been besieging Bakhmut for seven months. His attack on the city in Donetsk province, led mostly by Wagner mercenaries in recent months, is Russia’s longest war in Ukraine entering its second year. Both Ukraine and Russia are facing heavy casualties at Bakhmut, but Kiev’s forces say they count seven Russians for every Ukrainian casualty. With little strategic or military value, Bakhmut is essentially a political play for Russian President Vladimir Putin after months of fiasco.
Despite advancing and attacking in waves from infantry and assault groups, Moscow’s troops in Donbass have barely advanced a few yards and are heavily focused on Bakhmut, where Ukraine is distracting them from others and forcing Russia, which also has ammunition problems, to drop troops and issue material.
Kiev promises to keep the city and keep fighting for it. In recent days, the battle for Bakhmut has reached a turning point that could mark the further development of the battles for this city, but also the war in Donbass. Ukrainian reinforcements dispatched in recent days launched several attacks over the weekend and managed to repel several Russian military attacks, even pushing them back a few centimeters in some parts, but Moscow is advancing further into the city and already has three under control flanks and various neighborhoods. The reinforcements could also serve to ensure the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the city in the event of a tactical retreat to better fortified positions outside the city.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday downplayed Ukraine’s possible loss of Bakhmut. “I think it has more symbolic value than strategic or operational value,” Austin told reporters during a visit to Jordan, according to Portal. The defense minister stressed that the capture of this city by Russian troops must mean a change in the course of the war.
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The confrontation between Prigozhin and Shoigu is an open secret, and tensions between the two finally erupted on February 22. The businessman broke the self-censorship of those around him that day towards the Kremlin and published a photo with more than fifty corpses from his company, the death of which he pointed directly to the high command. “These comrades died yesterday. Because of lack of ammunition, as it is often called. A fifth, a fifth! Mothers, women and children will receive their bodies, who is to blame for their deaths? The culprit is the one who does not solve the ammo supply. at the end of the list [de suministros] Signature should appear [el jefe del Estado Mayor ruso] Valeri Gerasimov or Shoigu. You don’t want to make the decision. They don’t want Wagner to exist,” Prigozhin said at the time.
In another eerie video released this weekend, Prigozhin showed a number of bodies — this time Ukrainians — in coffins. “We sent her home,” he said in the middle of the night while coffin lids banged in the background.
The lack of supplies for Wagner has opened cracks in the Russian military. One of the most popular channels of Russian warmongering circles, TopWar, has attributed the exclusion of the mercenary company to Gerasimov replacing the incumbent chief of the Russian armed forces. “The fewer shells the gunners have, the greater the infantry losses. It has been demonstrated since World War I. Prigozhin was forced to make a fuss to keep winning, and no matter how his campaign is viewed on the networks or in the press, Prigozhin is right,” reads an article ensuring his mercenaries ” work much more efficiently than the regular army units”, although “we all know very well that the price is high”.
Wagner’s advances in Soledar and Bakhmut have cost the lives of thousands of inmates conscripted into Russian prisons, and now the orchestra, as the company is nicknamed, has its sights set on sports clubs, most notably Kontakt. Prigozhin has opened new recruiting centers at eight sports complexes in Moscow, two more in Rostov-on-Don and Samara and another at the headquarters of the Russian Boxing Federation in Tyumen, the Institute for War Studies in the US announced.
in the ruins
The businessman’s criticism watered down the mass bath that Vladimir Putin received at Moscow’s Luzhnikí Stadium on February 22 to mark Defender of the Fatherland Day, and this time he has spoiled Shoigu’s visit to Mariupol. The Defense Ministry on Monday released a video showing the general landing a helicopter in the ruins of the Ukrainian city’s international airport. Shattered windows, shattered walls and bullet holes adorned the entrance to the terminal upon Shoigu’s arrival, his first visit to the city nearly a year after he told Putin he had taken the city.
“The minister has inspected the restoration work on Donbas’ infrastructure carried out by the Military Construction Department of the Russian Defense Ministry,” the agency said after the conclusion of the general’s visit. Any precaution was little for Moscow as the advance of Ukrainian forces has brought the area within range of their missiles.
The video showed little more detail of Shoigu’s journey. His subordinates showed him some notebooks with photos of the construction projects in the open air and then accompanied him on his visit to an empty medical center where only three stretchers could be seen. According to the defense statement, Moscow plans to build in the devastated city a complex for the Federal Office of Medicine and Biology, a center for the Ministry of Emergencies and a couple of mini-districts, each with twelve and six residential buildings.
Shoigu’s visit to Mariupol came many months after other senior Russian officials toured the city. The first of them was Deputy Prime Minister Marat Yuznulin, who set foot in this Black Sea city in May last year. According to his calculations, the restoration of the ruins will take at least three years, and around 28,000 workers are currently working on the work. And in January of this year it was the turn of Deputy Prime Minister and Head of Industry Denís Mantúrov, who placed special emphasis on the restoration of his port area and factories.
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