Ukraine war: Wagner chief says Russian position at Bakhmut at risk without promised ammunition
- Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his fighters were worried about being set up as scapegoats if Russia lost in Ukraine
- Kyiv claims Russia was losing 500 men a day in Bakhmut, using them as ‘cannon fodder’ in ‘meat grinder tactics’
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force warned that Russia’s position around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was in peril unless his troops got ammunition, the latest sign of tension between the Kremlin and the private militia chief.
Ukrainian military officials and analysts also reported leaders of Russia’s 155th Brigade fighting near the town of Vuhledar, south of Bakhmut, were resisting orders to attack after sustaining severe losses in attempts to capture it. Kyiv said Russia was losing 500 men a day in the battle for Bakhmut.
For its part, the Russian Defence Ministry on Sunday said Russian forces had hit a command centre of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment in southeastern Zaporizhzhia region. The ministry did not elaborate on the attack.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said Russia’s front lines near Bakhmut could collapse if his forces did not receive the ammunition promised by Moscow in February.
“For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal,” Prigozhin, referring to the absence of ammunition, said in his press service Telegram channel on Sunday.
The mercenary chief regularly criticises Russia’s defence chiefs and top generals. Last month, he accused Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and others of “treason” for withholding supplies of munitions to his men.
In a nearly four-minute video published on the Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops were worried that the government wanted to set them up as possible scapegoats if Russia lost the war.
“If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse,” Prigozhin said. “The situation will not be sweet for all military formations protecting Russian interests.”
A Russian victory in Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of about 70,000, would give it the first major prize in a costly winter offensive, after it called up hundreds of thousands of reservists last year.
Russia says it would be a stepping stone to completing the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of its most important objectives.
Volodymyr Nazarenko, a commander of Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut, said that there had been no order to retreat and “the defence is holding” in grim conditions.
“The situation in Bakhmut and around it is very much hell-like, as it is on the entire eastern front,” Nazarenko said in a video posted on Telegram.
Ukraine’s military said early on Monday its forces had repelled 95 Russian attacks in the Bakhmut area over the previous day.
“The situation in Bakhmut can be described as critical,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in a video commentary.
Still, the Russian military was suffering huge losses in the battle for Bakhmut, according to information out of Kyiv.
“The Russians’ losses run to 500 killed and wounded every day,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
The Russian soldiers were merely “cannon fodder” in the “meat grinder tactics” used by Moscow, he said.
The human rights organisation “Russia Behind Bars” recently said that of the 50,000 mercenaries recruited in prisons, only 10,000 were still at the front. The rest had fallen, been wounded, captured or had deserted.
The battlefield accounts and casualty figures could not be independently verified.
To the north of Bakhmut, Russian troops advanced towards the town of Bilohorivka, just inside the Luhansk region, and shelled several settlements in the direction of Kupiansk and Lyman, the Ukrainian military said.
To the south, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces made preparations for an offensive in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, shelling dozens of towns and villages including the city of Kherson, causing civilian casualties.
Near Vuhledar, southwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk, Ukraine said senior officers of Russia’s 155th Brigade, which Kyiv says suffered heavy recent losses, were refusing to obey orders to attack.
“The leaders of the brigade and senior officers are refusing to proceed with a new senseless attack as demanded by their unskilled commanders – to storm well-defended Ukrainian positions with little protection or preparation,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement.
Military analyst Zhdanov said two “Cossack” Russian units known as Steppe and Tiger had expressed frustration with their commanders and refused to take part in any new offensive on the hilltop town.
The reports could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Russian Defence Minister Shoigu was on a rare visit to his forces in Ukraine, awarding medals and meeting commanders.
Shoigu, in meetings with commanders in the Donetsk region, discussed the current situation and paid particular attention to conditions for Moscow’s troops, Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a statement.
That included “the safe accommodation of personnel in field conditions, the organisation of comprehensive support for troops, and the work of medical and logistics units”.
The ministry on Saturday released a video of Shoigu’s visit, showing him in meetings with field commanders and presenting medals to Russian troops.
On Monday, he visited the eastern city of Mariupol, captured by Russian forces last year after a months-long siege.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Shoigu went to the region “likely to assess the extent of Russian losses around Vugledar and the possibility of a further offensive in this direction”.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, dpa and Bloomberg
