Maybe it’s just a provocation, but there’s no doubt that it makes noise in a climate of conflict. The head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has announced that he will stand in next year’s presidential election. But not in Russia, as some might assume, but “in Ukraine”. “The important announcement” came in a video message recorded while gunfire rang out in the background, believed to be from Bakhmut’s front. Prigozhin, 61, says he will face current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko.
And the question of ammunition that the Kremlin would not send to the battlefield is still open. And the complaint comes again from Wagner’s boss. Prigozhin asked for 10,000 tons of ammunition to continue fighting at Bakhmut. The request comes in a video showing Prigozhin standing on the roof of a destroyed house allegedly 1.2 km from the center of Bakhmut. “We will win,” announces the mercenary leader, adding that nobody in Moscow need fear that he has political ambitions. What he is requesting is the supply of ammunition. It takes half a million dollars a month, he says, and Russian oligarchs could pay for it.