The leader of the Wagner mercenary group in Russia said that he will withdraw his troops from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on 10 May due to a lack of ammunition.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s statement came after he posted a video of himself walking among the bodies of his dead fighters, blaming Russian defense officials.
“Tens of thousands” were killed and wounded there, Prigozhin said.
Russia has been trying to capture the eastern city for months, despite its questionable strategic value.
Wagner’s troops were deeply engaged.
In his statement on Friday, Prigozhin, 61, pointed his decision to leave Bakhmut directly to the defense ministry, using expletives.
“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where are the… bullets?… They came here as volunteers and died for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany offices.”
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov are frequent targets of Prigozhin’s ire, amid reports of fierce infighting among various power groups in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage .
In the statement, Prigozhin said that the casualties of his Wagner “grew in geometrical progress every day” due to the lack of ammunition.
But he stressed that his fighters would remain in their positions until May 9, when Russia will mark World War II Victory Day, and withdraw to Bakhmut the following day.
In a video released earlier, Prigozhin – seen standing in front of his men – said he would “transfer the positions of the settlement of Bakhmut to the units of the defense ministry and withdraw the corpses of Wagner to the logistics camps to lick our wounds”.
“My youth will not suffer the senseless and unjustified defeat of Bakhmut without ammunition,” he added.
Prigozhin is a publicity seeker, and his influence seems to have waned in recent months. He has previously made threats that he has not followed through on – later dismissing them as jokes and military humor.
Just last week he told a Russian pro-war blogger that the Wagner fighters in Bakhmut were nearing the end of their ammunition supply, and needed thousands of rounds of ammunition.
The Kremlin has not commented on Prigozhin’s latest statements, saying they are related to what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military says it has seen no significant fighting near Bakhmut.
“For months, Prigozhin has been trying to make outrageous statements to draw attention to himself,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Command, told BBC Ukrainian.
And Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar said that Russia is desperately trying to seize Bakhmut on 9 May.
Prigozhin emerged as a key player in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022, overseeing a private army of mercenaries that spearheaded the attack on Russia.
He recruited thousands of convicted criminals from prison for his group – no matter how serious their crimes – as long as they agreed to fight for Wagner in Ukraine.
Prigozhin hails from St Petersburg, the hometown of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two probably first met in one of Prigozhin’s restaurants in town. Years later, Prigozhin’s catering company Concord was contracted to supply food to the Kremlin, earning him the nickname “Putin’s chef”.
The battle for Bakhmut dragged on for months. Wagner’s troops and regular Russian forces fought on the same side, against the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine has decided to defend the city at all costs in an apparent attempt to focus Russian military resources on an area of little significance.
In February, Prigozhin posted another image of his dead troops and blamed army chiefs for their deaths.
Although the military denied deliberately starving his Wagner group of shells, at the time they responded by increasing supplies to the front line.
US-based military analyst Rob Lee argues that Wagner’s latest complaint of shortages likely reflects the Russian defense ministry’s munitions rationing ahead of a long-awaited counter-offensive in Ukraine. .
The ministry needs to protect the entire front, but Prigozhin’s only concern is to get Bakhmut, he wrote on Twitter. If Wagner gets the city Prigozhin can claim political credit, Mr Lee added.
The mercenary chief himself predicted that the counter-offensive in Ukraine will begin on May 15, because tanks and artillery will be able to advance in dry weather, after the last spring rains.
In a separate move, Prigozhin appeared to hire a recently dismissed army general as logistics chief.
Col-Gen Mikhail Mizintsev has been dubbed the “executioner of Mariupol” for his role in last year’s bombing of the southern Ukrainian port, which Russian forces captured a year ago.
Prigozhin pointed out that the general did his best to help supply the mercenaries with ammunition and cooperated with the group’s efforts to recruit convicted prisoners into its ranks.
Col-Gen Mizintsev was only put in charge of army logistics in September, shortly after Prigozhin was filmed inside a Russian prison telling inmates they could be released from prison if they served with to his people in Ukraine.