Wagner chief says no offensive in Bakhmut without weapons, threatens to withdraw on May 10

Head of the private Russian paramilitary company Wagner on Saturday warned that his fighters would leave the ruined city of Bakhmut on May 10 due to lack of ammunition and that they could not pursue any further offensives near the city that remained under Russian siege for 10 months. Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a Telegram audio message, said that he has still not received any additional ammunition from Moscow despite repeated appeals to replenish heavy losses of weaponry.

Hours after he announced that Ukraine officially began its spring counteroffensive, Prigozhin was seen in recorded footage from the frontlines making an expletive-laden speech against Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian armed forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov.

“We are lacking 70% of the needed ammunition!” angry Wagner chief Prigozhin said as he used the flashlight on the corpses of his troops laying outdoors.

Ruined city of Bakhmut. Credit: Telegram/wagner

Credit: Telegram/wagner

The devastated city in eastern Ukraine has witnessed more than three-pronged attacks during the longest modern urban battles fought by notorious Wagner assault detachments. Russian airborne forces, to some extent, relieved Wagner units by securing the northern and southern flanks during the "special military operation." Ukrainian defence claims that its military still holds some portions of the western districts of the town battered and razed particularly due to the intense Russian artillery fire.

PMC Wagner's chief, the Russian Oligarch Prigozhin dubbed famously as 'Putin's chef' spearheaded the campaign to take Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk— one of four provinces Russia illegally annexed last fall— that holds a tactical military value. His fighters made slow but grinding progress as they pressed on with the deadliest assault during the bloodiest battle fought since WWII in Europe. Prigozhin, although, has been threatening to withdraw his men in the coming week due to dwindling ammunition supplies and mounting casualties of his fighters who, he says, have “nothing left to grind the meat with.”

Battle of Bakhmut. Credit: Telegram/Wagner

Credit: Telegram/Wagner

“As of today, no one has come to replenish ammunition, to provide it in the necessary volume,” Prigozhin said in an audio message published by Telegram channel of his press service. “There can be no offensive without a counter-battery fight, without defeating the enemy’s means.”

No offensive without a counter-battery fight: Prigozhin

Wagner's head, prematurely, claimed that his forces have taken 95 per cent of Bakhmut, which had a prewar population of more than 70,000 but that "there can be no offensive without a counter-battery fight, without defeating the enemy’s means.” He went on to assert that he would not go ahead with further offensive “because it will lead more men to certain death. On the 10th [of May], we will start withdrawing units". The latter claimed that the remaining 5 percent of the territory that Ukraine's military is still holding out "plays no role in the so-called development of success and the Red Army’s march to the West." 

Ruined city of Bakhmut. Credit: Telegram/wagner

Credit: Telegram/Wagner

Since the inception of the war on Europe's eastern flank, Prigozhin has openly slammed Russia's Ministry of Defense for not supplying the quota of the weapons to his fighters. “The dead and wounded – and that’s tens of thousands of men – lie on the conscience of those who did not give us ammunition, and this is Defense Minister Shoigu and this is Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov," he said in another audio message. “For tens of thousands of those killed and wounded, they will bear responsibility before their mothers and children, and I will make sure of that,” he went on to add. Wagner chief, although, hurled praises on Russia's ex-Deputy Defense Minister Mikhail Mizintsev, who recently joined the Wagner Group as its deputy commander.